Heart and a Half
by Sinister Scribe
Summary: Hunting Queen (bit old fashioned I know). AU wherein Regina realises that she loves Graham and she can't bear to kill him. She gives him his heart back instead and that's just the start of her problems. It's gonna be dark, it's gonna be bloody, there's gonna be smut and sometimes all of those things might happen at the same time. Not your shot of vodka, don't read.
1. Chapter 1

**So...here we are with the long awaited Hunting Queen that i've been threatening people with for a while. Those of you that follow my Stable Queen story will have seen that i've been chatting about this and will know that it will be updated as and when the mood strikes me. Which shall hopefully be often :D**

**So here's my Christmas present to all you guys, it's a lot darker than my last outing but i'm going to keep plenty of that Regina snark in here that you all love so much :)**

**So merry Christmas, hope you have a good one. **

**Read, love, review. **

**Chapter 1 – Satisfaction**

_WHAM!_

Regina allowed her face –for just a second- to show the unutterable glee she felt at finally planting her fist into the vaunted deputy's face.

That wet meaty sound of knuckles meeting cheek. She'd misjudged it –years out of practice- she missed her nose and the stunning blow that would have allowed her to follow up with a killing strike…still, it was satisfaction defined to watch Miss Swan reel away from her with a commoner's grunt of pain and surprise.

Regina watched her, head tilting. She read the body language, saw the dumb rage flash in the younger woman's eyes. Oh please, how had she ever made a living as a bonds person if she telegraphed everything as if it was in Vegas neon? The shift of the weight, pivoting on the ankle, hand balling.

Regina very nearly rolled her eyes but her own body was already twisting, her jaw turning. She took the hamfisted punch like a pro and staggered the bulk of the force off with a shrug. She dropped the flowers and stumbled, not having counted on her heels. She sighed when Miss Swan cinched her arms around Regina from behind and dragged her towards her father's mausoleum. Stars burst behind her eyes when her skull rapped off the stone pillar. She could taste blood in her mouth and she felt the bloodlust rise.

So long. It had been _so_ long since she'd killed someone. Not since the curse had first began and even that had been more necessity than anything else.

But then Graham.

He was snarling at Emma, dragging her away and Regina shrugged it off. Dusting her jacket off and sloping down the steps back to where she had dropped her father's flowers. She scooped them up and felt Emma's approach. She tensed, half turning.

Do it, Regina's tongue slithered over her teeth, _do it_.

Give her an excuse, any excuse, the next time Swan touched her it would be her last. A punch gone wild, that would be the story. Whoops, had that been her trachea? How clumsy.

Henry would likely never forgive her but –in that moment- Regina didn't care.

"Not worth it." Emma huffed at her and yomped past Regina with that pounding dinosaur gait of hers.

Not worth it? What the hell did that mean? Of _course_ Regina was worth it. According to Miss Swan's whole damn destiny, Regina was the meaning to her entire existence. Without the Evil Queen, who had use of a hero?

Regina turned, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, her jaw aching pleasantly, and saw her Huntsman watching her carefully.

"Graham…" Had he seen?

Had he finally seen the mask slip? Had he remembered? Did he see her as he once had? As his…owner.

Graham's eyes were empty. He shook his head, barely acknowledging her, and stepped around her. Trailing after Swan like he had once trailed after her.

Yet another thing stolen from her by the precious Swan.

Regina stood and watched them go. For a long time after they had disappeared from her field of vision, she observed the gloomy trees of the cemetery. The sentinels of the tombstones standing over empty graves keeping vigil to her latest humiliation.

Regina reached up slowly, absently, and smeared the blood from her mouth. It stained her skin, leather gloves being a poor tool to clean up with, but she licked the copper taste from the leather anyway. She remembered the first time she had tasted his blood, remembered how he had arched under her as her teeth had scraped the skin of his throat raw.

All she had to do…was _squeeze_.

Spinning on her heel, galvanised in the sanctuary of her rage, Regina powered up the steps to her family's tomb and threw open the door. She stilled, calming almost in the face of her father's marble coffin. She sucked in a deep breath, steadying herself, and closed the door behind her with a quiet click. Resting the flowers reverently on the coffin, Regina slid her gloved hand over the smooth marble. The blood she hadn't swept away with her tongue left pink streaks on the stone. It would stain.

She didn't care.

Regina rested both hands on the coffin and –with a sudden heft- threw her weight against it. The sound of stone grinding over stone rumbled through the tomb and her bones. Blue light spilled up against her from the stairway brought into view.

Cautiously, Regina picked her way down into the vaults beneath. The tunnels spread beneath the tomb in a labyrinth only she knew the full extent of. She had an entire subterranean network down there. With connections to the larger tunnels of the sewer system, Regina could feasibly traverse Storybrooke from one side to the other without ever stepping above ground.

Though the chamber she sought was considerably closer than that.

Regina listened to her heels clip against the stone floor as if from very far away and tried to identify this curious quiet that had frozen in her chest.

She'd always had an internal rage, having learned from a young age that having feelings –any kind of feelings- were only weapons to be used against her. Smiling at the wrong person, laughing at the wrong joke, comforting someone beneath her station –all of them had been used to punish her in some form or another. She had learned fast. Feel nothing…or by the gods look like you didn't.

She had never actually _felt_ nothing though.

She always felt something. All the time, without surcease, she knew the full extremity of every emotion. Serenity was a foreign concept, apathy a pipedream, solace as alien as this world she had brought everyone to. Everything beat in her head like a drum, a siren song in her ears. She'd learned that the only thing that drowned out her mental screams, staunched her pain, was that of others.

It was cruel, she knew it was, but it was the only thing that gave her some modicum of peace. The only thing aside from…from using Graham.

Well, that ship had sailed.

Regina was aware her face was doing something strange. Her mouth downturned, her eyes burning.

No matter.

She stalked the hallway, to her vault of hearts, and admired the golden walls. The thump of their little gleaming lights glowing in the dim. The light was warm both in colour and actual temperature. All those hearts, all that power, was quite pleasant. She didn't collect them for nothing after all.

Regina worked her hands free of her gloves, this was a thing better off done skin to skin as it were.

Her fingers tapped against the golden boxes. Fifth down, third to the left…a Huntsman's heart. Regina scooped it carefully out of the box and held it in her palm. She was always surprised at how small they were. Such a large man as Graham and she was able to encompass the focal point between his body and his soul in even her small fingers.

Betray her? Leave her?

All she had to do was _squeeze._

Across town Graham's lips burned from their contact with Emma's and he staggered away from her, dimly aware of her hands on his shoulders, asking if he was alright. He was a little too far away to answer her right then.

Everything.

He remembered everything.

A torrent of memories washed through him. The wolves, the forest, learning to clothe himself, take on their speech, take on their mannerisms, walk human, talk human, but never be one. _Never _be one.

Graham sagged against the desk and gulped in great heaving breaths. The Huntsman. He was the Huntsman.

"Graham? Graham, are you alright?" Emma shook his shoulder and he blinked at her as if seeing her for the first time.

"Emma, I remember."

"What?"

"I remember. I remember everything." He grinned then, his eyes shining.

"Uh…okay?"

Graham couldn't stop smiling, he cupped her face in his hands, feeling free. Feeling so free. He kissed her, because he was happy, because he really knew why he couldn't feel and that he wasn't crazy.

Then pain.

Graham choked, sagging in Emma's arms. Agony exploded throughout his chest. A familiar clawing sensation, a lump of iron in his chest where his heart should be. Graham gasped, clutching at his chest and sinking to the floor, Emma clutched at his shoulders, calling his name, trying to get through to him, but Graham couldn't hear her rightly over the shrieking of his own body.

Then it stopped.

Graham took long moments to come back to himself and –when he did- it was to the soft patter of Emma's tears dripping down onto his face. Her face floated over his and his breathing began to slow, his thundering heart (because now he could certainly hear it) dropping from a gallop to a canter and finally slowing to something regular.

It had stopped.

He had felt her. Felt Regina on the other end of the connection. She had been about to kill him, to destroy him for leaving her, just like she had promised…but she hadn't. She had stopped. What did that mean? A threat? A warning? Did she not have enough magic in this world to finish the job? Should he look forward to a knife in his back instead?

What the hell was going on?

Regina was asking herself that exact same question deep in the vault. She stared down at the heart lying on the floor.

It lay there, rocking minutely in time with its slowing pulse, glowing softly. She watched it intently, her eyes wide and black, and looked at her hand. Her fingers shook, her entire hand and arm trembling.

What…?

Regina stooped and picked up the heart. She cradled it in both hands, examining it like she had never seen it before. It pulsed, strong and steady, thudding its magic and strength against her skin as if in defiance of her ill will towards it.

She hadn't been able to do it.

Not that she'd been physically unable, her fingers had caged and crushed the heart easily, but that she hadn't the will to fulfil the task.

The will was important. Enchanted hearts were incredibly strong and powerful. Just one had powered the entire curse, after all. It wasn't enough to crush one in the hand –no one would be strong enough to do it, it wasn't just a physical thing- it had to be mental too. You had to _want it_.

Regina hadn't hesitated since the unicorn. She'd never not had enough will to crush someone's little heart in her delicate fingers. Not a human's anyway.

Impossible.

Regina shook her head sharply and held the heart between her palms, raising her elbows and preparing to squash it between her hands but…but…her arms shook instead and she became aware that her cheeks were cold. Closer examination showed her scarf to be damp, tears staining it.

Tears?

What use had she for tears?

She'd crush his heart and leave, letting the dust decorate the floor, leaving nothing of her unfaithful pet save the ash on the ground and the empty husk of flesh no doubt cooling in the good deputy's hands.

Yes. She'd kill him and be back in time to battle with Henry into putting that damned book away and actually getting a good night's sleep…yes.

…as soon as her hands would obey her command and crush the heart in her palm.

Any minute now.

It hit Regina then. The heart hadn't changed. It wasn't stronger, no more indestructible to her wrath than it had been back in the Enchanted Forest. They were magical in and of themselves, as was she, the entire town along with her. She might not be able to tap into the blanketing spell that encompassed the whole of Storybrooke and manipulate it to her will, it was still set to the prerequisites of the curse when she had cast it (though they were certainly deteriorating since Swan had arrived), but she should still be able to crush one if she so desired. They hadn't changed at all in that sense.

No, it was _her_ heart that had changed.

Regina finally identified the freezing cold that had become an arctic winter in her chest. The desolate pain that clawed at her from the inside.

The choked sob caught her completely by surprise.

"_No."_ The word was ripped from her in a growl that would have been more at home in the chest of the Huntsman's dear wolf. "I do NOT love!"

Regina's treacherous hands cradling his heart oh so gently belied her denial.

No. She was strong. Love was weakness. She had outgrown that need decades ago. Graham was a pleasure toy, a dalliance, a pet. She cared nothing for him beyond what he could do when her back met the sheets at night. She didn't _love_ him. She had loved one man and he was dead. Gone forever. She was ruined, her heart deadened inside, she couldn't possibly have it within her to feel that again.

Please, anything but that.

Regina looked down at the heart in her hand and began to shake. She trembled so violently her teeth rattled against one another. She shook so hard that she barely managed to stuff the heart into her pocket before she dropped it again. It was a dull roar to begin with. The rising tide of madness.

No, she hadn't done this in years. Not here, not now, not where she might escape. Not where she might happen to someone.

Not here, not yet, not where someone might hear.

Regina staggered forward. She careened off walls and stumbled on uneven flagstones, disappearing deeper and deeper into the catacombs. She searched for the door, her haggard reflection cast back on her a hundredfold with each mirror she passed. Her hands scrambled, she couldn't remember which one. Which door, which mirror, _which one?!_

Click.

The mirror swung out and Regina threw herself through the door. She still shook, barely able to coordinate herself long enough to close it all the way. As soon as it shut, she spun and leaned heavily back against the wall. She felt the lock tumble into place, a lock that had a combination that only a lucid mind could release. Tumbling and tumbling, she listened to the gears moving with well oiled precision over one another and –when the last pin locked in place- she _raged._

The scream roared from her, tearing her throat with its ferocity. Her pupils blew, engulfing the coffee dark of her eyes into the mad yawning black of a shark's frenzied stare. Her lips peeled back over her teeth and her hands curled into claws.

The room was her royal bedchamber. Blue and soft, not black and harsh like the rest of her castle. She had transported it here with the Curse. It was filled with trinkets she had collected over the years, nearly every available space occupied with an elaborate mirror and it was those she fell on first.

It took seconds to ruin her hands.

She smashed them. Every mirror, every reflective surface, beaten to shards beneath her frenzied fists. She tore the frames from the walls, crushed the panes beneath her heels, watched the mercury bead across the plush carpet of the floor. When she was done, when she couldn't see the warmask her face had twisted into, she moved onto the furniture.

She screamed all the while, in languages long dead and those not yet written. Her rage had to go somewhere and it would escape into the sound housed in her lungs until her throat gave out. Had she still had her magic, she'd have destroyed the room in a maelstrom of force, splintering everything apart with nothing more than a concussive blast of her personality but she didn't so she had to make do with the old fashioned approach.

Which had a satisfaction to it in and of itself.

It took a long time for her to wear herself out. Miss Swan might have said Regina was unfit from ten years of sitting behind a desk but the little chit didn't know the half of it. Regina, mad Regina, could and had lain waste to entire platoons of soldiers with nothing more than a fit of pique and a dagger.

When it was done, when the rage bled away with some very real blood into the carpet, Regina surveyed the damage.

Annihilation.

Everything. Everything she had meticulously brought with her from the Enchanted Forest, her most prized possessions, the dearest things she couldn't bear to part with, gone. Torn, ripped or crushed into smithereens. The carpet had been shredded in places and even the walls bore the marks of her fingernails dragging the velvet paper away and scoring into the stone beneath.

She ached. Even her hair hurt. Every bone and muscle felt every single one of her years and decades beyond that. She was exhausted.

Regina was slumped against the wall with nothing but the destruction of what remained of her haven in the Enchanted Forest and the hoarse sounds of her breathing for company. Slowly, torturously, she drew her knees up to her chest and hugged her arms about them. Letting her forehead drop down onto them, Regina let out a slow breath.

She did not love.

Love was weakness.

She was not weak.

She did not love.

Then…why couldn't she crush that stupid beast's heart?


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2 – A Yoke of Heartstrings **

_**The Next Morning…**_

Henry yawned and rubbed at his eyes, tripping down the stairs and trying to wake up enough to make the monumental decision as to what to have for breakfast. The old faithful of Shreddies or chance his mom's ill mood and go for some Lucky Charms? Would the sugary buzz be worth the lecture about giving himself diabetes?

Of course, there was always the chance she had slept late and he could get away before she even saw him.

He had heard her come in late the night before. _Really _late. It had been after two by the time she had padded along the corridor outside his room and Henry had huddled down, desperately feigning sleep for when she opened the door to check on him. He had been up so late reading the book. She would be furious at the best of times, him not getting enough sleep, but over the book? She'd flip her lid. He'd held the overheated flashlight hot in his palm from just having doused it, every sound seemed magnified a thousand times as he listened carefully. Had she noticed? Had she seen the light in the window despite him camping under the duvet?

Henry needn't have worried.

His mom hadn't even opened his bedroom door, just continued slowly –very slowly- past his room and into her own. He had heard the shower go on and –even though it had seemed to take forever for him to fall asleep- it had still been running when he had finally slipped into slumber.

Henry slipped into the kitchen quietly, it was dark inside, and flipped the light. A small part of him thought about going up to check on her. Last night had been weird. She always checked on him when she came in. She always showered in the morning too…something wasn't right and –while Henry was determined to stop the Evil Queen- he was somewhat resigned to her being his mom too and that he kind of…well he DID care about her.

Rats. He was going to have to go and wake her, wasn't he? She was going to be surly and moody about it too. Having slept in. She'd have coffee instead of breakfast and take it out on someone else because she was in a bad mood.

Another thing Henry needn't have worried about.

"Mom!" Henry twitched in surprise when he flipped on the kitchen light and found Regina exactly where he hadn't expected her to be. "What are you doing?"

Regina half turned to him, her hair falling over one side of her face and she watched him for a long moment with just one eye. She seemed to not know him for a moment, then she blinked and it came back to her.

"Henry."

"Mom? Are you okay?" Henry cautiously approached.

She was sitting on the worktop, her legs tucked up and her feet in the sink. Her feet. In the sink. Henry stared.

"Hurry and have your breakfast." Regina said instead. "Miss Swan shall be here to collect you soon, I imagine."

She lifted a coffee cup to her mouth with a hand that barely shook and set it back down on the windowsill with a deliberate and practiced precision. She pried her hand from the coffee cup and Henry stared.

"Mom, your hand!" Henry rushed forward, snatching the steps from under the island counter and planting them in front of the sink. He clambered up, reaching to take her hand in his and take a closer look. "What happened?!"

"Nothing." Regina bit back her hiss when he closed his fingers around hers and the bandages covering them. She was more gauze than skin at the moment.

"Mom, your feet!" Henry looked down into the water and saw the massacre that was Regina's feet.

She had ruined her shoes the night before and cut clean through to her feet. It had been a LONG walk –and in places a crawl- back to the manor. She had whiled the night away showering away the grime and blood and had moved on to trying to rebuild her appearance. It had always been much easier with magic, she could erase the damage with a well placed spell or three, but not here. Here she had to make do with medicinal alcohol, bandages and superglue.

Which meant she had been caught before she could fully disinfect her feet and dress them as she had done her hands.

She was really quite lucky that she hadn't severed a blood vessel or even a finger. She'd been quite far gone the night before and utterly exhausted when she was done.

So far so that the enchanted heart still lay in the pocket of her overcoat slung over the end of her bed where she had dropped it the night before. She did hope Henry didn't come across it, that might add a little more credence to his claims than she preferred.

Then again, perhaps it was time. Perhaps she was finally done. Maybe they would make it quick. A nice beheading or a proper hanging. She'd rather avoid the stake burning, that wouldn't do at all.

"What happened to you?"

Regina twisted rather than answer him and reached into the cabinet behind him and over her head. She pulled out a brightly coloured box. Lucky Charms, his favourite.

"Here, make yourself a bowl. You're going to be late."

"No." He frowned at her. "What happened? Did someone do this to you?"

"No. I tripped."

Henry arched a brow.

"Are you lying to me?"

Regina looked at him a long moment and blinked languidly. There was no reflection in her eyes, Henry noticed, they swallowed even light. They were almost purple this close.

"Yes."

Henry blinked, thrown.

"Will you tell me what happened?"

"No."

"Oh."

"I must admit, I'm surprised you care." Regina straightened away from him and picked up her coffee cup again, sipping it and not looking at him. "I would think you'd be delighted to be that much closer to crowing 'ding-dong, the witch is dead'."

"That's not fair." Henry's voice was very quiet and his conscience _burned_ him.

"Neither is betraying your mother to the woman who abandoned you, but here we are." She was staring out the window, only half paying attention to what she was saying, which was why it was the truth. "Get ready for school, Henry. Your 'real' mother will be here soon."

Henry didn't move. Nothing in him did. He was reeling from the pain her words inflicted. She had _never_ spoken to him like that. She spoke to other people like that. She towered over him on the counter top, not stooping to speak with him in the slightest. That was what she did with other people too. She bent down for him, crouched so they were closer to eye level…not today. Henry felt the loss keenly. He fidgeted, his hand grasping the canister on the counter by the taps.

"Salt?"

"A natural antiseptic." Her voice was still largely absent.

"Doesn't it hurt?" Henry looked into the cloudy water around his mother's bare feet. He could see the cuts and bruises latticing over them. The water stained ever so slightly pink.

"Like hellfire." Regina agreed blandly.

"Why…why would you do that?" Henry looked up at her, more than a little confused and even more so when she laughed suddenly.

"I hope you never find out." She reached out and stroked his hair, an unconscious gesture, seeming not to notice the way her bandages and plasters caught in the strands.

"Mom…are you okay?" Henry tried again.

"No."

"What's wrong?"

She laughed again and turned to look at him and her smile faltered only when his mouth dropped open.

"Your _face_!" Henry reached up but she jerked back out of his reach. "Who did that to you?!"

"Henry…"

"No!" Henry slammed the salt canister down on the counter and scattered the white crystals everywhere. "Somebody hit you! Tell me who did it!"

Regina very deliberately scooped up some salt grains and tossed them over her shoulder. She did the same for Henry. Gathering her words.

"It's none of your concern."

"You're my mom! Of course I'm concerned!"

"How nice of you to finally notice." Regina offered him a tight smile, pained because of the swelling of her lip and jaw. "That does not, however, mean you have the right to interfere. Unlike some, I don't need a Saviour to fix my problems for me." Regina pulled her feet from the sink and let the water away. She dried them meticulously with a clean towel and then lowered them down over the side of the cabinets.

"You're my mom." Henry said again, less sure this time. "Beating you up is against the law…isn't it?"

"Henry," Regina did lean in close then, almost nose to nose, "either you believe I am the Evil Queen, in which case I must surely be destroyed, or I am the woman who raised you and you betrayed by committing theft, running away to find the woman that abandoned you and dragging her back here to rub my face in it. Which, I think, is more malicious than anything a storybook villain could hope to muster."

"You can't be both?" Henry was stunned and the question was out before he could stop it.

"Don't be cruel, Henry." Regina's head lifted at the sound of a knock on the front door. She turned her attention back to him as she carefully lowered herself from her perch by the sink. Her teeth bared at the pain that had to thrash her feet but she made no sound of discomfort. "I raised you better than that."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Henry was suddenly angry, made more so when he realised his mother was leaving bloody footprints on the white tiles as she walked away from him. She didn't even turn to look at him when she spoke.

"It means you've chosen your side and it's not mine."

Henry could only stare as she left him alone in the kitchen.

He was left floundering for a long moment before he jumped down off the stool and followed the red footprints past the foyer and the stairs to the front door in time to see Regina open it on Emma.

"Miss Swan." Regina's voice was devoid of emotion and Emma paled when she saw the older woman's face.

"Your face…"

"You are late for that conversation." Regina cut it off before it could go anywhere. "Henry hasn't eaten yet. I trust you can muster a bowl of cereal from the kitchen for him?"

"Uh…yeah, sure." Emma cautiously stepped inside when Regina released the door and turned her back, walking back into the house. The footprints she left in her wake didn't go unnoticed by the deputy. Emma cast a wild eyed glance at Henry.

Really? Regina had cut up her feet and blackened her eye to gain sympathy from Henry and the town. Great, just great, she kept underestimating the damn psychopath.

"Mom?" Henry twisted when Regina walked with controlled precision past him. Deliberately not limping. "Where are you going?"

"Bed." Regina answered shortly. "I'm going to take the day."

Regina gripped the banister of the stairs with a white knuckled hand and sucked in a bracing breath. She hauled with her arm and her jaw clenched when all her weight was put on one lacerated foot. She blanched, but made no sound of pain, and repeated the process. Torturing herself up another step.

"We're not done talking." Henry reached through the bars of the railing on the staircase and gripped his mother by the ankle. "Somebody hurt you."

"Henry," the word seethed from Regina with brutal control, her eyes bright with pain of every kind imaginable, "if your curse breaks and I am the Evil Queen, what do you think is going to happen to me?"

Henry blinked.

"I…"

"In the Grimm version of Snow White, the evil stepmother was made to wear red hot shoes of iron and dance at Snow and Prince Charming's wedding until she was dead from burns, pain, exhaustion or perhaps even their insipid company."

"Regina!" Emma couldn't believe the venom coming from the woman and directed at Henry of all people. Regina had _never_ been cruel to Henry in that way. Henry was the only person –at all- who the Mayor treated like a human being.

"What? You mean you haven't researched this?" Regina arched a brow at Emma. "I would have thought, as a bounty hunter, that you'd be familiar with researching the criminals you brought to justice. If you are going to play along with my son, the least you can do is give it your all."

"He doesn't mean…"

"Yes." Regina's voice was icy steel. Cold, sharp, brittle and ready to break. "He does."

"I don't want you to…I wouldn't let that happen." Henry gulped, eyes wide. "That's not what I meant when I said…"

"You'd prefer a hanging?" Regina looked down at Henry, her bruise blackened face a mask of apathy. "Perhaps being drawn and quartered. Maybe even torn apart by four…well, pickups would be more fitting here I would think."

"Regina that's enough!" Emma stepped forward and sliced her hand through the air. "I don't know what the hell you're playing at but that's sick!"

"Mom, I don't want you to die."

"Then why paint me the villain?" Regina focussed on Henry again. "Villains die, Henry. It is their lot. Think of that the next time you place that black crown upon my brow. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have wounds to lick in peace." Regina turned back to the stairs and dragged herself up them, ignoring the worried glances on her back as she disappeared into the upper floors of the manor.

Henry, gaping, watched her go. She had never…he hadn't meant…gosh, had he?

Every story, every movie, every fable, myth and legend featured a gory demise for the villain of the piece. Henry had been calling his mom evil for so long that…well, he hadn't thought beyond what would happen when the curse broke. People would be angry –as they should- but that meant they'd come after her and Henry was just ten.

Emma might side with him, maybe, but she was just a deputy. One woman, an outsider, Snow and Charming…he couldn't imagine they'd be in favour of saving Regina from her apparent just desserts.

"Emma, I didn't mean it. Not like that."

"She knows that, kiddo, she's just pushing your buttons." Emma squeezed his shoulders. "She likes to do that."

"Not to me." Henry looked a little broken. "She lies sometimes –a lot of the time- but she does it because…I dunno, she doesn't want me to break the curse. She's never –NEVER- mean to me. Not like that. Not like she is with other people."

"Listen," Emma folded her arms over her chest, "I don't know what she told you, but I didn't hit her nearly hard enough to do that kind of damage to her face and…"

"_YOU_ hit her?!" Henry almost screamed it. "It was you?! Why would you do that?!"

"She hit me first!" Emma defended herself and realised how that sounded. The way Regina looked compared to the distinct lack of bruising on Emma didn't really speak to her defence. That wily bitch. Henry might be convinced she was never cruel to him, but Emma knew better. She wasn't blinded by misguided loyalty.

"You're the Saviour! You're not supposed to be like that!"

"Really?" Emma planted her hands on her hips. "Think about what you're saying, Henry. If I really was the Saviour, I'd have to do a lot worse than punch her in the jaw –which was ALL I did- to defeat her. Judging by what the book says about her. If the Evil Queen had all her powers, I think it'd be a pretty short fight and not in my favour."

Henry frowned and shook his head sharply.

"No. There has to be another way. Mom isn't going to die and you're not going to kill her."

"Well, _I _knew that." Emma muttered.

"New plan; Operation…Wolf. Find out who hurt my mom and why." Henry nodded vigorously to himself. "We're gonna need a list of suspects."

"We don't have a sheet of paper big enough." Emma said mostly to herself.

"You gonna help or not?!" Henry demanded fiercely.

"Yeah, of course, but it's gonna have to wait until after school. We're going to be late." Emma decided to give up on trying to talk sense into him. She should have thought she'd have learned by now but apparently not.

"Operation Wolf comes first." Henry got that mulish look on his face. "We gotta go to the police station and file a report with the Sheriff. I want the guy that hurt mom caught and locked up."

"No way, Regina would skin me alive if I let you bunk school." Emma shook her head and frogmarched Henry towards the kitchen.

"But…!"

"Nu-uh," Emma shook her head sharply, "breakfast and then school. We can talk to Graham after."

"You promise?"

"Sure thing, kid." Emma decided not to tell him that he might be visiting the good Sheriff in the hospital.

_**At the Hospital**_

"Really, I'm fine." The Huntsman, Graham, fended off Doctor Whale. "I'm discharging myself, going home."

"Sheriff, you were complaining of chest pains last night. According to Miss Swan, they were so severe you collapsed. I don't think you should…"

"I have the right to discharge myself." Graham's voice hardened.

With his memories returned, he now remembered why he disliked people so much. Pushy and stinking and in his way. He muscled down the urge to stuff Whale into the nearest trashcan and mustered a civil tone instead.

"I'll be going now. If I feel ill again, I'll be sure to return." Graham pulled on his jacket.

Not that he would have to, because he was going to get his heart back from Regina. She had to have it here, that was the only thing that could hurt like that and it was the queen's hand closing around the heart she had taken from him.

"Fine, but on your own head be it." Whale shoved a warning finger in Graham's face and had no idea how close he came to having it bitten off.

Graham had been raised by wolves, after all.

"I'll keep that in mind."

Something in Graham's voice must have filtered through the doctor's thick skull because he backed off suddenly.

"Right, well, feel better, I suppose."

"Your well wishes are appreciated." Graham growled and forced the doctor to get out of his way when he left the room.

Graham was forced to smile and nod his way out of the hospital but desperately avoided stopping for small talk. He had places to be, after all.

He made it all the way to the front doors of the hospital before he was harassed again.

"Graham!" Emma grabbed his arm and jerked back when he shook her away, rounding on her with teeth bared. He did not like to be _touched_.

"Emma." He forced himself to soften when she blinked in confusion. Of course, she didn't know what was going on. Well, she didn't believe at any rate. "What?"

"You should be in the hospital! You nearly had a heart attack."

"I feel fine."

"But you shouldn't…"

"I. Feel. Fine." Graham couldn't keep the growl from his voice.

"Oh…okay." Emma frowned but backed off a little. "I'll take you home then."

"Fine. I need a shower anyway." Graham had been overjoyed the night before, to get his memories back, to know who he was, to know he could fix what was wrong with him.

But fixing what was wrong with him involved going back to Regina and –if she still had his heart- he'd never get close enough to do a thing.

Still, he had to try.

"How's your face?" Graham glanced at Emma, trying to remember what he should do since he was supposed to like people.

This was bizarre. Two lives running riot through his head. It was disorientating, but he could already feel himself adjusting, realigning.

"Fine, better than Regina's."

Graham looked up at her sharply.

"You've seen her this morning?"

"Yeah, I picked up Henry for school. He wants to talk to you, by the way."

"About his book?" Graham could have sounded more enthused by the prospect of having his eyeteeth pulled with a pair of rusty pliers.

"No…about Regina."

Graham frowned.

"She's…she looks like shit. Someone worked her over after we left her. I thought it was self-inflicted at first but she seems…different."

"Different?"

"I dunno, she always seems vicious and cruel but today…she was mean to Henry."

Graham frowned. It could be argued that he knew the queen better than anyone. He had been working under her for…well, for a long time in one way or another. He knew her mercurial moods, knew how vicious she could be. He also knew from this world how she doted on the boy. She loved him –or as close to it as she could come to it with her blackened heart. She was cruel to everyone…everyone save Henry.

"To Henry? You're sure?"

"She told him what he meant when he called her the Evil Queen, when he said he wanted nothing more than to break the curse…she said it meant that he wanted her dead. She started talking about being torn apart by pickups. It was pretty brutal." Emma hunched her shoulders and stuffed her hands in her pockets. "The kid was pretty shaken up."

"So…what do you want me to do?" Graham rested a hand on top of the yellow VW Bug while Emma wrestled the keys out of her pocket.

"Well, she has been worked over. That is a crime, even if she is a psycho." Emma shrugged. "That and…she knows you pretty well, she may actually tell you what happened."

"No she won't."

"Graham she might have been…" Emma stalled and looked away. "She was beat up. Regina's no angel but nobody deserves that. You're the sheriff it's kind of in your job description to stop this kind of stuff from happening."

Graham growled and looked away from her.

Oh yes, that was his job now, to ride herd on people and save them from their own selfish problems. By all rights, he should still be a hunter, a hunter of criminals…had Regina seen fit to bring him a criminal population worthy of his skill.

No.

Instead he had been given the occasional bar brawl and parking ticket. Hardly worth his time.

There had been a time when he had hunted with wolves, when he had run naked and wild under the moon. Torn down animals with nothing save his teeth, his strength, and the company of his lupine siblings. The forest had been in his bones, the chase in his blood, the thrill had been the light in his eyes.

Now?

Now he was a lackey, his clothing might have changed but his purpose remained the same; her pet.

No more.

"Alright, I'll go to her." Graham turned back to Emma, his eyes bleak. "See what she has to say."

"Good." Emma nodded and gave a lopsided smile. "Henry will be glad. He's ready to fetch pitchforks and light torches over this."

"I want to shower first." Graham wanted to be out of her company more.

The Graham part of him had liked her, liked her vulnerability, liked her humour, her softness. The Huntsman was a different animal entirely. A wolf in human skin. Wolves had no need for softness unless that of a mother for her cub and –even then- that was tempered in the fierce maternal protection any she-wolf worth her fur could mete out. Humour? Wolves had humour, but hardly something that would be understood by humans. Wolves knew nothing of vulnerability, for the weak were taken by the forest.

Graham had risen to be the Alpha of his pack, his human shape meaning little to his family, and alphas chose alphas. Emma was not an alpha.

Simple as.

"Right." Emma shifted awkwardly and looked away from his gaze first.

She missed the way his jaw clenched at the submission.

How…boring.

"Well, I'll drive you home then." Emma held her breath a moment and gathered herself. Graham's hand clenched on the door whilst he waited for her to lather herself up into opening her damn mouth. "About last night…"

"It won't happen again."

Emma blinked and her blue eyes darted to his dark.

"Oh, uh, good…then." She smiled tightly and Graham shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Graham might have been charming and affable with everyone –biddable- but he felt distinctly like the Huntsman right then and the Huntsman was none of those things.

"Good." Graham nodded.

"Uh…hop in then." Emma threw open her door and dived into the car. Graham waited while she leaned over to flip the lock open. He clambered inside and grimaced when his knees were nearly up to his ears in the cramped space.

He hated this damn car.

_**The Manor**_

Regina sat on her couch in the living room, tumbler of cider in one hand, staring at her bandaged feet.

She had finally managed to get them taped back together so she looked less like some macabre jigsaw puzzle and they might actually heal right.

She had slept little, despite having lain in bed for most of the day, and had finally given up and soothed herself a little by cleaning the bloody footprints she had left on the carpet. She had been surprised to find the clumsy attempts at cleaning on the kitchen tile, she suspected Henry's involvement, but it mattered little.

Regina sipped her cider and savoured the burn against her split lip.

She had always liked cleaning. Especially after one of her crimes. She did like the messy ones and perhaps it was because she enjoyed cleaning them up. It was part of her ritual. She destroyed, massacred, and then cleaned everything away afterward.

Disposed of bodies –burning them usually- cleaning the weapon she had used, mopping up the blood, wiping away the tear stains, setting the furniture to rights.

Like nothing had ever happened.

The person causing her problem disappeared and the scene replenished as if they had never existed in the first place. No loose ends. A job well done. Nice and neat. Ordered. In control.

Nothing about this was under control.

"Graham."

She spoke before she had even fully processed his presence.

She was almost surprised when he stepped around the couch and into her view. He towered over her, staring down at her with almost black eyes and she saw. The wildness, the fire. No matter how long she'd had him, how she'd used him, she'd never been able to snuff that flame. Never been able to own him completely.

"Huntsman." She corrected herself.

"Majesty." Graham, the Huntsman, whoever, prowled around the coffee table and sat with dangerous precision on the seat opposite her couch. He watched her with a gimlet unblinking stare. "So you _are_ aware."

"Of course." Regina nodded to the cider decanter on the coffee table. "Help yourself."

"A little early is it not?"

Regina shrugged.

"Henry worries for you."

"No he doesn't." Regina snorted and drank from her cider again.

"He does."

"What do you care?" She lanced him with a look, unhappy with the line of the conversation.

"I like the lad." Graham shrugged. "He can't help being your son."

"As he has been so willing to point out; he is not my son." Regina bit out, knowing that was what he had wanted to hear. To stick the knife in her weak spot. She wondered if he had any idea that _he_ was the other chink in her armour.

The chink right over her heart.

Stupid woman, she berated herself again.

"He still worries."

"He will forget in time." Regina drank from her cider again. It was quickly going to her head. It had a kick at the best of times, but she had been without food for the entire day. Not a good combination.

The Huntsman frowned at her and tilted his head. His eyes dropped to her neck briefly and she nearly smirked. He could call her evil all he wanted –and she was evil, she knew that- but she wasn't the only stone cold killer in the room. _She,_ at least, had never torn out a man's throat with her teeth.

"It was one of your rages." His voice was quiet, his eyes ticking over her injuries. "You did do this to yourself."

"Swan inquires." Regina rolled her eyes and turned to look out the window. "Insipid twit."

"She's a good person."

"More fool her."

The Huntsman's chin tilted down and he looked at her from under hooded eyes. She couldn't help the thrill that raced through her at such a dark and dangerous look.

He could kill her, she realised suddenly. Quickly, easily, effortlessly even. With his bare hands. He could leap across that table and literally tear her head from her shoulders and there would be next to nothing she could do about it. She had no magic to her name, he was bigger, broader and stronger than her and she'd gotten lazy. Twenty eight years behind a desk. She wasn't fat, but being slim and being fit are two very different things.

All this time, all their relationship –if you could call it that- she had been in control. She had been the stronger between the two of them. She had been the one to call the shots. When to summon him, when to send him away…no longer. He was stronger. She loved him. He held all the cards.

The sound the tables made as they turned grated thunderously through her head so loudly that she shivered.

"Someone treading on your grave, majesty?" The Huntsman smirked, enamoured with the prospect of dancing on her grave himself probably.

"It's cold in here." Regina lied smoothly.

"You've never felt the cold in the past."

"On the contrary, I feel cold every day." Regina summoned a smile from somewhere and they measured each other with long glances.

This veil of civility couldn't last. Not with her teetering on the edge and not with him going slowly rabid for the return of his heart. Emotion and pain bled from them in streamers and clouds so thick and fast it seemed to make Regina's ears pop with the pressure.

"Say what you came to say." She spoke quietly.

"Where is it?"

"Not here."

"Liar."

"Not so. Your heart is the one thing keeping me alive right now. Without it, I'm defenceless."

"Not a day in your life."

"You know that's not true." Something stark flashed in her eyes and Graham looked away from her.

He did know that.

Back in the Enchanted Forest, before she'd ever heard of the curse of curses, he had been her right hand man. He had spent the most time with her, not just in her bedchamber but at court, during meetings of state and –often- she'd had him shadow her when she walked the gardens of the palace. He had been one of the few allowed to stand in the shadow of her apple tree without reprimand and she had often spoken to him. The same way someone speaks mostly to themselves but knows that their pet is listening, even if it didn't understand.

The Huntsman had understood, every word, and he'd seen early on that –as deeply as she had wounded him- she was so far from whole herself it might have been laughable had it not been so tragic.

"Will you give it back to me?" Graham looked at her hard then and he measured her every move. The hitch in her breath when his eyes met hers, the way her fingers tightened on the tumbler of cider in her hand and he knew- when she spoke- she was telling the truth.

"I don't know." Regina inhaled a heaving breath and inspected her drink. "You will believe this or you won't; but living here has changed me. This curse…is a curse to all. It cost me dearly and it costs me still. The only things I have left are my life and Henry and even one of those slips from me now…if I return your heart to you, there is nothing to stop you from turning on me or Henry. For you have always known where to strike the killing blow, Huntsman."

"Henry has nothing to do with us, you have always made that clear and I will abide by those wishes even now. _If_ you return my heart to me." The Huntsman spoke evenly despite the thrill that went through him at the prospect of being complete once more. He had dreamed of it for years, years and years, and now it was finally a possibility.

It was heady stuff.

"And me, Huntsman? What will you do to me once I return it to you?" Regina tilted her head and he saw she was right. She had changed.

The Evil Queen still sat opposite him but there was also the Mayor and the Mother…as well as a very tired and broken woman. Regina was all of those things and more and –as horrific as she was, as dangerous as she could be- she would always be fascinating too.

"I don't want to kill you." Graham was surprised when he realised it was the truth.

She frowned at them, not seeing the lie either but still unable to believe it.

"I will return it to you on one condition."

"I'll not kill for you, not again."

She smiled, a sad smile, and shook her head.

"I do not ask for me. The curse is breaking and –with it- this life I had carved out for myself here. Everything is breaking down and when it does finally crumble…there will be an angry mob out there with my name on it. I cannot cross the town border, I am as trapped here as everyone else, but I imagine I shall be dealt with fairly swiftly."

"Your price?"

"Protect Henry." Regina stared at her bandaged feet for a long moment. "He may not love me anymore, but I'm still his mother, I will gladly die for him…when I'm gone, I pass that to you. Protect him with your life, Huntsman. As you did his grandmother, fly in the face of all costs and consequences and keep him safe."

"Henry will hardly be in danger from the people of this town. He's the son of the Saviour."

"And also that of the Evil Queen. Thanks to my recent action, people here believe him one step down from a raving lunatic, there will be those that would believe in nurture over nature and it would be those that would do him harm."

"You really…you ask me to save him and not you? Truly?"

"Don't get me wrong, Huntsman," her grin had a gleam of cruelty to it then, "I'll not go without a fight but I am fully aware that the only thing I'll be able to do is take one or two of them with me." She chuckled. "I don't even know how to use a gun."

Graham said nothing, he couldn't think of how to put everything he felt into words. He didn't even know the full extent of it yet.

"I would be bound to your loyalty even after your death." He said instead.

"You would be bound to Henry, not I." Regina shrugged a shoulder. "That is my price."

"How can I trust you?"

She snorted and sipped at her cider.

"You can't. I am the Evil Queen and will forever serve my own purpose, it just so happens that now both our purposes may be joined. Swear fealty to my son and I shall give you your heart back."

"I'd be putting my life on the line for nothing."

"Not for _nothing_." Regina snapped. "For Henry."

"They won't attack him."

"Then why does it matter to you? You'll have your heart back."

"Because if there's no real reason that I can see, you're working your own agenda and I'll not be party to your schemes again. I'm done with being your lackey."

Regina chuckled. Of course he wouldn't believe her. No sane man would. Why should he trust her after all these years?

"Then this conversation is over."

"It's my _heart._"

"Which does not come without a _price._" Regina bit right back at him. "I have made mine known, think on if you're willing to pay it."

She glanced away from him and he melted away from her whilst her eyes were averted, as any good hunter would.

She felt his presence in the room a long time after he was gone.

What the hell was she going to do?

_**Graham's House**_

Graham looked so peaceful when he slept.

Regina had always thought that.

No matter what she did to him or how she used him, when he slept, when she allowed him to sleep at her side, she had always watched him and she had always envied him that peace. It would seem , no matter how much she thought she owned him, he could always escape her into his dreams.

Regina melted forward, out of the shadows, and stood over his bed.

This was madness, stupidity of the highest order. He'd come for her. Once he had his will, he'd kill her. Most likely cut out her heart the way she'd wanted him to kill Snow. It would be fitting, she supposed. What Henry wanted. The Evil Queen dead and gone.

It had only hit her that morning, exactly what Henry meant every time he told her he wanted the Evil Queen defeated…because that's what it would take. She would never give up, never give in, they'd have to kill her to get her to give up her son. He could love her again…couldn't he?

Couldn't he?

He could, couldn't he?

Regina gulped, her eyes burning.

She wasn't just losing her son, she had already lost him. She had…she had nothing. Not Henry, not Graham, not her happy ending. The curse was breaking, it was a matter of time before everything came crashing down and…and she no longer cared.

What did it matter really?

She had betrayed Daniel, she loved another. She had opened herself to all that pain, all that misery, yet again. Henry had his birth mother now, Graham was lost to her as well, now that he knew who she was, who he was.

Wouldn't it be nice? For it to finally be over. To finally rest, to sleep, to not be subjected to the torture of her own broken heart. To be…free.

Regina reached up, tucking her hair behind her ears and leaning over, Graham's bed. She looked down at him, memorising his face, knowing that he would be her murderer, one way or the other. One hand dropped, delving into her pocket and she flinched violently when his eyes flashed open and his hand manacled her wrist all in one motion.

Graham roared sitting up and wrenching with his hand on her arm.

Regina yelped when she was sent flying across the bed. She screamed when something cracked in her wrist when it twisted and something popped in her shoulder when she hit the floor and was sent tumbling.

Graham threw back his sheets and hurled himself from his bed, snarling and terrible. His eyes glinted in the dark and something metal flashed in his hand.

Regina winced her way to a sitting position, her entire arm was numb. She gasped when his hand fisted in her hair and he dragged her upright. She noticed in passing that he was completely naked. Of course he was, that was how he slept.

The knife was shockingly cold when he jammed it into her middle.

**Well...i didn't say it was a _nice_ Christmas present, did I?**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hey, guys, happy new year!**

**I hope it brings you many good things, fresh starts and all that jazz.**

**I suppose I should feel guilty about last chapter's cliffhanger but I just kept laughing whenever I read you guys freaking out. Yes, I am cruel and capricious and there's not much any of y'all can do about it :D**

**But I can be a benevolent god, so here I am with the next chapter. **

**SO, everyone is gleefully awaiting Henry's reaction and all the pain I can heap on him at any given moment and I will NOT be letting Regina run over his feelings with a combine harvester just to please everyone because that's just not in her character. She's been in a pretty low place for the first couple of chapters but it will get better for all concerned. **

**Eventually. **

**:D**

**You know you love me. In deep, private, musky places. **

**I apologise, this note is being written under the influence of some tasty French cidre. Booyah. **

**BRING IT ON, HOGMANY!**

**And reviews are love, FYI.**

**Chapter 3 – Broken Hearted**

He'd stabbed her.

Regina made a strange sound, something between a wet choke and a gasp. Her eyes went wide and blood coughed from between her lips. The knife had slid into her so hard that it had lifted her clean off the floor for a second. She had to scramble at his shoulders to hold on when her feet hit the floor again. Gosh, her shoes seemed really far away all of a sudden.

Regina hung on the blade, her mind a white plane of shock, her nails scraping over his skin as she struggled to process the freezing hot sensation of a blade in her chest.

"Well," the word spilled from her lips with a mouthful of blood, "that was entirely expected."

"Regina?" Graham's hand released the knife and he stared down at her, gripping her elbows to keep her upright. "What…?"

"You stabbed me." Regina knew he suffered from the same bloodlust she did. A trait she had been sure to nurture in him. He probably hadn't even been aware of where he was, he'd just seen her looming over him and he'd reacted on instinct. Only this time he'd been able to act on it. She had no magic to bind him to the bed. "To be fair, not the first time you've done it."

Her smile showed pink blood stained teeth and her wink was a little lazy. There was a lot of blood. She knew there was only about eight pints in a human body but that seemed to be a LOT of blood on the floor.

"God," Graham sank with her to the floor when her knees buckled, "what have I done?"

"What you had to." Regina was beginning to find it difficult to breathe. She could feel the metal of the knife digging into her lungs with every breath.

"I didn't want this!"

"I find that…hard to…believe." Regina coughed, blood spattering onto Graham's face he was cradling her so close. Her hand was fumbling, incredibly still in her pocket, her fingers felt cold and weak. She rallied the last of her strength. She hadn't done what she'd come here to do.

"No, I didn't, you're so…broken." Graham stared down at her as if it was news to him. "I didn't want you dead."

"You wanted me to suffer…wish granted." Regina managed something of a smile and she lifted her hand torturously from her pocket. Her head was beginning to loll, she didn't seem to have the strength to hold it up. Her fingers quested over his chest by memory. Not just his chest but hundreds of others. Find the sternum, track over it with the thumb, turn the heel of her hand forty five degrees…and sink the fingers in.

"No!" Graham saw her hand gripping his heart and assumed the worst. That if she was going he was damn well coming with her.

"For you…"Regina with a strength she hadn't known she possessed, pressed the heart to the wall of his chest, his grip slackened when he felt she wasn't trying to hurt him.

She had been tender in the past, of course, when she had wanted something or been sad or convinced herself enough that he was her lost love. Those had been the nights when he'd come away without bleeding. Then, here, when he'd gone to her willingly…she'd…she'd given a damn good impression of making love to him.

"I did…you know…in my way." Regina was still choking on her blood but there seemed to be less of it, or she was breathing less. Maybe both.

"Did what?"

"Love…you…" Regina's fingers trailed from his chest when the light in her eyes began to dim. They fluttered closed, her body tilting, falling into his and she rested there as if she had fallen sleep. There, like that, finally free, she looked rested. She looked at peace.

He wasn't aware of it, too wrapped up in what was happening right in front of him, but the ground began to tremble. A deep, thrumming, rumble that echoed throughout the entire town. Storm clouds rolled in out of nowhere. Great boiling thunderheads that reared and clashed against one another. Lightning flashed but there was no rain and some of it seemed...purple.

"Regina." Graham shook her. "Regina!" He shook her harder but she was limp and unmoving in his arms. "No. _No!__"_

Graham loomed over her, letting her down onto the floor and studying her. No. She couldn't be dead, not really, she was indestructible. She was the Evil Queen. She had taken more than her fair share of beatings in the past, he'd seen her run through with a lance and she had turned and impaled her attacker on it before she'd pulled it out and spelled the wound closed. Like she hadn't even felt it.

That was what she was. Marble, cold and unfeeling, indestructible. She couldn't _die._

It was then that he was aware of what he was feeling. He was _feeling_. Graham looked down and huffed out a whooshing breath of shock when he saw it. His heart. There, plain to see, sticking out of his chest. Pulsing a pounding red threaded with purple and a lurid verdant green. She had died before she could push it back in.

Hearts were strong, right? She could use them to do anything and they were magic. Even in this land without magic, they were magic. Graham's hand closed over his heart before he could think better of it and he yanked.

Then something impossible happened.

It broke.

Graham made a wordless sound of shock when it just cracked like an egg in his hand. He stared open mouthed at half of his own heart in his hand. It still pulsed, red, purple and green. Still beat strong and hard, kicking in his hand. Looking down at his chest, he could see the other half sinking beneath the skin. He gulped in hard breaths, trying to process and then deciding he could figure it out later.

Graham tore open her coat and ripped open her shirt under it. He hesitated a moment, it needed to be right, the placement. He had one chance. Where had she…?

She was growing cold, he was out of time. Graham pressed his pulsing heart over where her still one lay within her chest and pushed.

It was so easy.

His heart sank beneath her skin without even a token resistance. His fingers plunging in with it and her entire body jolted. He felt the layers of skin, the strands of muscle, the bone, the foam of her lung against his knuckles and then the heavy density of her still heart. He pushed the living half of his heart onto her dead one and commanded her.

"Live."

Regina jolted as if struck by lightning and her eyes flew wide. She whooped in a screaming breath and her hands clawed at him. Her heart kicked, faltering and faint, but it was beating.

The shaking of the earth died into nothing, the clouds thundered but it was the quailing grumble of a retreating storm. Finally, it began to rain.

"What have you done?!" Regina's legs kicked with the agony and uncontrolled signals coursing through her body as it came screaming back to life.

"You're not getting away from me that easily." Graham laid her gently onto her back and snatched up a pair of pants. He hauled them over her legs and turned back to her. "Don't you dare pull that out." He slapped her hands away from the knife still angled up beneath her ribs.

A perfect killing strike. He knew his craft well after all.

"It hurts." She choked, tears streaming down her face. "It's so heavy. I feel like I have a rock in my chest." Blood was still trickling from her mouth but less than the great streams of it that it had been before he had saved her.

"It's the knife, come on."

Regina screamed when he lifted her. She couldn't help it. Everything hurt. It had been better when she had thought she was dying. That had been cold, numb, this was like she was on fire.

Graham kicked open the door of his bedroom and stormed his way out of the house, pausing only to snatch up his keys to his truck.

"What are you doing?" Regina gasped when they stepped outside and into a deluge.

Water poured from the sky like there was a leaking ocean up there. Great gusting sheets of rain that slashed over them and had them both soaked to the skin in seconds. The rain hit her like nails and she groaned when it rattled the knife in her chest. The rain was hitting the sidewalk so hard that it bounced twice. She had never seen rain like this.

At least, not natural rain.

"You're going to the hospital. I'm not letting you die." Graham fumbled the car door open and lowered them both into the driver's seat.

"Why not?" Regina whimpered when he put her into the passenger's seat and clapped her hands over her wound for her.

"Put pressure here."

Regina's hands clamped to the wound and pressed harder than she'd have thought possible.

"This is going to be hard to explain." She coughed a laugh.

"Don't worry about it." Graham jammed the key in the ignition and threw the truck into reverse.

It screamed out of the driveway and onto the road, peeling into a hairpin turn. The tyres squealed, burning rubber, when he sandwiched the accelerator between his foot and the floor. He held onto her legs, draped over his lap as they were. She had lost one of her shoes somewhere.

"They'll put you away for this." Her voice was weak.

"Don't you dare die." Graham warned her and she stiffened as if she'd been hit with a tazer.

"They will." She sounded stronger then. "Trying to kill me…back in the Enchanted Forest –heh- you'd have been sainted. Here…they'll crucify you."

"I'll explain. You startled me." Graham tore through the town. There was no traffic, everyone was asleep. They'd be in the hospital in minutes and then…then his life would be over. He'd given half his heart to keep her alive and he couldn't even say why.

"A five foot five woman against a six foot two man? They won't care how startled you were, dear. They'll only see the knife."

"_Don't_ take it out. It's the only thing plugging the wound." He snarled at her.

"There's my Huntsman." Regina spoke through gritted teeth. She felt like her chest was filled with lead. Her heart kept clenching, at least, that was what it felt like.

"You should save your strength."

"Say it was someone else." Regina was panting, her chest felt so strange. Weighty. "Say that I came to you for help."

"In the middle of the night?" Graham couldn't believe he was going along with this. Then again, it would have to get in line along with everything else he couldn't believe he'd done that night. "What would you be doing at my house at two in the morning?"

"The same thing we do every time I'm there I imagine." Regina gasped.

"You'd have to explain to them that we're lovers."

"Were." Regina corrected quietly and he jostled her legs.

"Stay with me."

Regina groaned in pain but seemed to rally herself.

"A small town like this? People already know. Now that the curse isn't clouding everything. They know."

"How can you tell?" The hospital was in view. Not much further.

"You never wonder why no one else approached you? You're the most eligible man in town, dear. I wouldn't settle for anything less." Regina's eyes were closed, her face a mask of pain. "You're mine. I made sure enough people knew."

"Nobody will believe some stranger suddenly decided to knife you." Graham peeled into the parking lot.

"Me? Of course they will. Even here everybody hates me." Regina dredged a laugh from somewhere again. "And who do you think will be doing the investigation? You can't very well arrest yourself, can you?"

Graham said nothing, of course she was good at this. He screeched to a halt in the ambulance bay and threw himself from the car, dashed around the front and opened the passenger side door. She tumbled into his arms and he hoisted her against his chest.

"You're not allowed to die, you hear me? I forbid it."

Regina groaned as if he was killing her all over again, blanching marble white and nodding hurriedly.

"I hear you."

"Good."

Graham rushed through the automatic doors of the hospital and set about waking everyone up.

"Help!" He bellowed. "I need help!"

The receptionist looked up from her soap opera and snapped to attention when she saw the Mayor lolling in the Sheriff's arms.

"She's been stabbed!" Graham didn't lower his voice. "I need HELP!"

Doctors were finally responding, nurses snapping into action. All too soon, Regina was pulled from his arms and onto a gurney. Graham stood, chest heaving, in the foyer of the hospital and watched her wheeled away.

He didn't miss the way her head lifted before they rounded the bend, didn't miss the way her hand reached out to him before she was wheeled out of sight.

He was entirely unaware that his own hand opened and stretched towards her too.

Gods, what had he done?

_**Later…**_

Graham sat in the waiting room of the hospital and tried not to go out of his mind.

He _ached_.

He could feel it. He could feel his heart, the physical meat heart, thudding steadily in his chest but he could also feel the pulsing throb of his other heart. The heart of his soul that Regina had ripped out so many years ago. It felt like a rock in his chest. He had never imagined that it would hurt so much to be complete again. He knew it was only half his heart, the other half now in Regina's chest, but he certainly felt like he had a whole heart worth of pain.

It was hellish, this miasma of pain and confusion that swirled horrifying and tearing in his chest. A hurricane of hate and…and…he didn't know what else. His head ached. His chest felt like it was filled with lead. He hurt all over.

Graham stared down at his bare feet on the cold linoleum floor.

He'd pulled on pants at his house but hadn't bothered with a shirt or shoes. One of the nurses had gone to try and find him some slippers but he suspected she had been distracted by the drama of the Mayor's surgery and had forgotten to bring them to him. Someone had mentioned something about scrubs so he could wash up and get changed into something that wasn't splattered in blood but no one had come back to check on him.

It was all kind of hazy. He remembered signing something –though he hardly thought himself capable of the hand-eye coordination required for a signature- and he had been surprised that he was listed as Regina's next of kin. In the event of her being harmed…her life was in his hands.

Despite everything, all of it, she had trusted him with that?

Graham shivered. He was cold, but it was a physical cold. Internally he was practically on fire.

Exultation at having finally meted out a little pain to the hateful bitch that had leashed him, horror at yet more blood covering his hands and more because of her, guilt at having nearly robbed Henry of the only family he'd ever really known, worry that this was all going to come back to bite him in the ass if Emma didn't believe his sketchy story as to what had happened to Regina and…and…fuck.

He felt like whipping himself for hurting Regina.

Graham folded forward and pressed his thumbs to his eyes, his elbows propped on his knees.

She was evil, he reminded himself. Evil and horrible and she had enslaved him for decades. She had made him do cruel and twisted things, turned him into nothing more than a glorified attack dog. She had used him nearly every night for decades and –gods above and below damn him- but there had been parts of him that had enjoyed it. Wicked, cruel, dominant, wild parts of him that had liked nothing more than the excuse to do as he willed. To tear people apart, to kill them for the slightest insult to himself or his queen, to fuck a woman like he could never break her. To be taken harder than any other man could take.

Was this Stockholm Syndrome?

Had she broken his mind along with his spirit?

Was he just so used to the cruelty, to the damage, that he had fooled himself into thinking he liked it?

Graham glanced up at the clock. It was just after four.

Shit, where was Emma? He had called her almost a half hour ago. It didn't take that long to get dressed and haul her ass over to Regina's did it?

He'd sketched out what had happened to her. Told her Regina had been in an accident and he was her next of kin so he was stuck at the hospital. Henry should be looked after in the meantime. Despite Regina's dislike for her, Emma was available and could actually be trusted to look after Henry for a few hours. Especially if he was asleep for the majority of that time.

Graham huffed out a breath.

He was not looking forward to telling Henry what had happened to Regina. The censored version at least. She might believe Henry didn't love her anymore, but Graham knew that wasn't true. A little boy couldn't hold that much anger in his heart towards someone without caring for them deeply. If he didn't love her, he wouldn't care at all.

He was going to be crushed by this.

Yet another lie told to him and –hopefully- he'd never know the truth.

Though if Regina was right and the curse really was broken and she really did get killed by an angry mob, Graham supposed it would be a moot point.

"_WHERE'S MY MOM?!"_

Graham bodily flinched at the bellow that went through the hospital. He surged to his feet and he was running along the corridor before he made a conscious decision to do so. He slithered to a halt in the lobby and Henry's frantic eyes fell on him and went saucer wide.

"Graham!"

Henry tore across the lobby towards the Sheriff, a sob catching in his throat, but he refused to let it take hold. He skidded to a halt and stared in horror at the state of the man.

"Is that…?" Henry reached out hesitantly to Graham's chest and he glanced down at himself.

"Shit." Graham remembered that he looked like he'd gone ten rounds with a grizzly bear. He was splattered with dried blood over his chest, it had soaked into his pants and was even spotted over his feet. The rain had diluted it and made it look ten times worse. He looked as if he had bathed in Regina's blood he was steeped in so much red.

"Henry, it's not as bad as it looks…"

"Are you kidding me?!" Henry nearly shrieked. "That's, like, two people's blood there! What happened?!"

"Your mom was attacked tonight, she was near my house so she came to me for help," Graham decided to stick with as much of the truth as he could, "I brought her here as quick as I could. She's in surgery right now."

"Someone attacked her?" Henry's voice was incredibly small.

"Henry!" Emma spotted them and came running. "Damn it, kid, I told you to wait for me."

"You said this wouldn't happen!" Henry rounded on her. "You said you'd get the guy that attacked her!"

"Hey, whoa, kid…" Emma held up her hands. "I…"

"It's my fault, Henry." Graham spoke over Emma's stammering and gently turned the boy back to face him. He wondered what Regina might do to comfort him, so he sank down into a crouch so they were nearly eye level. "Your mom and I have had a…falling out recently. I should have been looking after her and I wasn't because I was mad at her."

"You…you're the sheriff!" Henry burst out, tears beginning to pool in his eyes. "You're supposed to be a good guy! You're supposed to put people's safety above personal…personal stuff!" Henry clenched his fists and seethed with the all-consuming anger that only children can really muster. "You should have made up with her! If you had, she wouldn't have gone to see you! You'd be in our house and she'd have been safe!"

Emma blinked and stared at the back of Henry's head. Nobody had known if Henry had known about Regina and Graham and nobody had seen fit to ask him.

"Someone attacked her last night and neither of you did ANYTHING!" Henry looked between them. "What kind of good guys are you?!"

"Human ones." Graham could find no better apology than that. "I'm sorry, Henry."

"Sorry won't help my mom." Henry's voice was frigid and damning. He channelled Regina pretty well.

"I know. I spoke to doctor Whale, he says she should be okay. She lost a lot of blood but Whale says I got her here in time."

Henry's chin wobbled and he looked hurriedly down at the floor.

"Thanks, for that…I guess." Henry sniffed. He lifted his head and the tears finally started to fall. His voice cracked when he spoke. "You really think she's going to be okay?"

"Absolutely." Graham managed something of a smile. "Your mom is far too stubborn to die."

Henry gave a watery smile and something like a wet laugh.

"Yeah, she sure is."

"Okay, why don't you go and sit in the seats over there? They're right outside the surgery rooms. If Doctor Whale comes out, he'll see you first. I need to talk to Emma for a bit."

"'Kay." Henry nodded and hurried over to the seats. He sat on one, his hands tucked under his legs, and stared hard at the doors. Willing them to open.

"Jesus, Graham," Emma hissed at him as soon as Henry was out of earshot, "what the hell do you think you're doing? You look like an extra from a bad slasher movie! Why didn't you clean up?"

"I've been a little occupied with what's been going on!" Graham snarled at her. "And what do you mean 'what am I doing?' what are YOU doing?! I told you to go and look after Henry, not traumatise him in the middle of the night!"

"He was already awake when I got over there, about to head out and look for Regina. I HAD to tell him what was going on and then he insisted on coming over here."

"He's ten years old! You're the adult, you didn't think to tell him that there'd been some sort of emergency? That Regina had actually sent you to look after him because she was needed elsewhere? Something that might have saved him some heartache?"

"Lie to him?!"

"You used to be a con-artist, I'm sure that it's within your repertoire."

"Hey, I'm not her, I won't LIE to Henry just because…"

"So help me god, if you keep trying to score points off her when she could _die,_ I'll throw you out that door over there." Graham snarled, pointing to the main doors of the hospital. "Right now, opening it first is optional."

"Hey, listen…"

"No. YOU listen," Graham loomed in front of her, covered in blood and boiling with anger, happy to vent it at someone, "you don't know anything about her or what she's been through. You don't know her motivations, you don't know her life and you _certainly_ don't know how to handle Henry like she does."

"You're not even together anymore." Emma frowned.

"I still care about her." Graham would have been uncomfortable to realise that was true at any other time but he was so damn _angry_ right then. "We've been together a _long_ time. She's fierce and a bitch and she's rude but she's given everything you refused to give to Henry. She raised him right. For that alone, you will speak of her with respect if not affection."

Emma blinked up at him, staring for a long moment.

"You kissed me last night." She said quietly. "Not the other way around. Don't take it out on me if you're feeling guilty about it."

"Contrary to what Henry might believe, not everything is about you." Graham couldn't keep the contempt from his voice. Regina might well still die and –with her- a rather important piece of himself. All Swan could think about was a sodding kiss? This was why he hated people. "It was a moment of ill judgement on my part. It won't happen again. You're not a patch on her."

Emma's jaw clenched and she looked away from him, swallowing hard.

"Anything else?" She tried to keep her voice under control but there was a quaver to it that she couldn't help.

"Aye," Graham nodded his head towards Henry, "look after him for five minutes whilst I get cleaned up and find something new to wear. You can control him that long, right?"

"Yes." Emma bit out.

"Outstanding." Graham spun on his heel and went to find that nurse that had said something about slippers.

He knew he should feel bad about crushing Emma that way. She didn't trust easily and he'd just cruelly cast it back in her face. Told her she was nothing. Part of him did feel a little guilty about it, but there was a much larger part that was steeped in the bone deep habit of viciously protecting his queen's reputation against any slight.

Graham growled when he realised that –whilst Regina might have tried to give him his heart back- it would seem that she still owned him.

Fuck.


	4. Chapter 4

**Right, kiddies, this one is getting updated for the simple reasoning that this chapter is complete and chapter 27 of Evil is Silent, is not. **

**I do -however- have an idea of what to actually DO with that story now. I had only written up to the point where Snow and Emma return and now i got it all figured out and HO-LEE-SHIIIIIT i'm setting FIYAH to things! Y'all may pee your pants. **

**Anyway, this is a bit of a nicer chapter (sort of) and we see a bit more of everybody and set the scene for events to come. **

**Read, love, review :D**

**Chapter 4 – Vigil**

Henry was like a cat on a hot tin roof.

His mom had been out of surgery for a whole day now and they still wouldn't let him in to see her. She was in critical condition apparently, not that anyone told him much. They always spoke to Graham and the Sheriff always looked so guilty then tried to put a brave face on for Henry. It didn't really work. Henry might not have Emma's gift for being a human lie detector but he knew enough to know when someone was blowing smoke.

He'd been allowed to look at her through the glass of the intensive care unit last night before Emma had taken him home to try to get him to sleep.

They'd tried to distract him with school but he'd been so out of it that Miss Blanchard had kept him back afterwards. She'd heard about what had happened of course. Everyone had. She'd asked if there was anything she could do and Henry had leapt on it. He'd begged her to bring him to the hospital, she was going to go and visit Prince Charming anyway, right? He could come along, just in case his mom woke up, then he'd leave with Miss Blanchard when she was finished reading to her husband. He'd be as good as gold. He wouldn't be any problem. He'd behave. He'd promised and promised and promised he'd behave if only they'd let him see his mom.

Graham had told Henry that morning that she'd been moved out of intensive care and into a room in a regular ward. She'd woken up once or twice but had been pretty out of it.

Henry had heard the nurses talking. One of the times she had woken up screaming. She had screamed and screamed and only Graham had been able to calm her down enough for them to sedate her.

And Henry, where was he? He was stuck outside. Looking in.

Henry sat in one of the cheap plastic seats in the hallway outside her room, his feet drumming on the floor, his hands clenched on his lap. He looked strung out. The nurses kept staring at him, coming over, offering juice. He thanked them and accepted because that was polite, but even taking a mouthful of it made him feel sick to his stomach.

He kept throwing up. His stomach wouldn't stay still.

He had done this. He had wished it on her. He'd said he'd hated her, that she was the Evil Queen, that she'd soon be defeated. Henry wanted the curse to break, he wanted it almost as much as he wanted his mom to wake up, but not at this cost.

What if that was what it meant?

What if the Evil Queen did have to die for the curse to break?

Had Henry done that? Had bringing Emma here weakened the curse just enough so that people remembered? So that someone might remember enough to try and take revenge.

"Jesus, Henry, what are you doing here?!"

Henry's head snapped up when Graham rounded the bend and called to him. Graham hurried over and crouched down in front of him.

He was clean today of blood and gore. He had gone home to change at some point, his clothes clean if not as neatly pressed as they usually were, his beard looked a little scruffier and his eyes were darkened with lack of sleep but he still looked better than Henry did.

"You look awful."

"Thanks." Henry managed a smile that was more of a grimace.

"Did Emma bring you here?" Graham sounded angry. He'd been angry since the attack.

Good. Henry wanted him angry. He wanted Graham as angry as he felt and he hoped he beat up the guy that had attacked his mom. He hoped he beat him with a stick and tasered him and kicked him until his leg got tired. Then he wanted Graham to switch to his other leg and keep going.

"No. Miss Blanchard did." Henry shook his head. He was mad at Emma too but she and Graham had to work together to catch this new villain that had attacked his mom.

"She left you alone? Here?" Graham's jaw clenched. "No one's let you in?"

Henry shook his head and Graham twisted to glare over at the nurses. They looked hurriedly away from him, sensing a pissed of Sheriff would be giving them a stern talking to later.

"No. Can I? Can I go in now?"

"Aye, 'course you can." Graham stood and settled a steadying hand on Henry's shoulders when he wobbled a little. "You're going to go and guard your mum and I'm going to go and get you something to eat. You're going to eat it and you're going to keep it down, okay?"

"Sure." Henry would have agreed to anything right then, all he could focus on was getting closer to the door which his mom was on the other side of.

"Henry," Graham stopped with his hand on the door handle and waited until Henry looked up at him, "this is not your fault."

Henry stared up at him for a long moment, as if it took time to focus on him.

"Can I see her now?"

"Yeah, come on." Graham gave up on that for now and ushered Henry into the room.

Henry bolted towards the bed and stopped at the foot of it, gripping the frame so tightly his knuckles whitened. His skinny chest heaved as he drank in every detail of her.

Regina reclined at a raised angle on the bed and she looked so tiny. She looked like she was made of porcelain. Her skin was a marble pallor, her eyes smudged with dark, still bruised on one side from the first attack. There was a tube strung across her face and under her nose, but not one down her throat so at least she was breathing okay. There was sticky tabs on her chest to measure her heartbeat and a huge needle taped into the back of her hand. Her other hand was in a cast to the elbow. Bags of stuff hung on poles by the bed, dripping into her.

Henry knew his mom was small. He was ten and he almost reached her shoulder, but she seemed to cast a fifty foot shadow. She was much bigger on the inside. Much fiercer than anyone that small had a right to be.

Today she looked small.

"See?" Graham took Henry's shoulders and drew him a little of a way away from the bed, he picked up the chart hooked there and pointed at a string of numbers. "That's her heart, it's getting better, it's getting stronger. Her blood pressure is normalising," Graham pointed to another string of numbers and then down to the comments at the bottom, "and it says here that her stitches are good and there's no sign of infection."

It said a lot of other stuff that Henry didn't understand. Fracturing of the ribs, dislocation of the glenohumeral, fractures to the trapezoid, trapezium and scaphoid bones, bruising of the sternum, piercing of the pericardium and contusions to the wall of the right ventricle and the caudal vena cava.

He would Google it later and know that it meant she had been grabbed by the wrist and twisted until the bones there were cracked, yanked so harshly and thrown to the ground with enough force to pull her shoulder from its socket, stabbed so hard her bones had broken and it was a miracle that the knife had _just_ nicked her heart rather than piercing it.

"So, you're going to sit here, and I'm going for food." Graham toted him over to the chair by the bed and pushed him down into it. "What do you want?"

Henry shrugged.

"Henry…_Henry_," Graham had to ask again to get the boy to look at him, "I'll fetch you food. What do you want?"

Henry stared at him for a long moment.

"Something from Granny's?" The longer Graham was gone, the longer Henry got to stay with Regina.

Graham smirked. He knew exactly what the boy was thinking. He had known him his whole life after all.

"I'm not going to take you away from her. Obviously trying to distract you with school was a mistake. You can stay right here until she wakes up."

Henry sagged suddenly back into the chair, a long sigh leaking from him. His eyes closed and his lower lip trembled a moment before he got himself under control. Just like his mom. Not as practiced, sure, but so damn proud and never wanting to show weakness.

"So, food?"

"Whatever. I don't care." Henry opened his eyes and they widened when his stomach gave a sudden yowl. "Maybe a lot of it though."

Graham smirked and nodded. Maybe he would go to Granny's.

"Alright, hang in there. Keep an eye on her. I'll be back as soon as I can." Graham reached out and squeezed Henry's shoulder.

Then he left Henry alone with his mother.

_**Granny's**_

Graham braced himself for the overwhelming scent of people and food and then pushed into the diner. The bell jangled overhead, heads turned and silence fell.

Graham huffed out a breath.

He ignored everyone and headed straight for the counter.

"Hey." Ruby wasn't her usual overly friendly self when she approached to take his order. She stood and waited for him to respond, not babbling on about this, that and the next thing.

"Hi." Graham shrugged out of the brown leather Sheriff's jacket and slung it over a stool. Graham reeled off the order and Ruby jotted it down hurriedly before spinning away to take it to the kitchen.

Right into the kitchen.

Graham huffed out a breath and pointedly ignored everyone. No one was quite brave enough to broach the subject of the Mayor's health and that suited him just fine.

Granny appeared seconds later and rounded the bar to stand right next to him. She waited with the patience of a continent until he turned to face her and, when she wrapped scarred arms around him, he even allowed himself to lean into it for a moment.

"She'll be fine, lad." Granny held him at arm's length. "We both know she's too damn ornery to let some paltry mugger keep her down."

Graham grimaced a smile and nodded.

"I'm sure she'd appreciate that, coming from you." The lie felt thick and heavy on his tongue but he told it anyway.

Granny and Ruby were two of the few people he could stand for prolonged periods of time. He even allowed them to touch him. Not often and not for long, but it didn't make his skin feel like it was two sizes too small. Must be the wolf in them.

"The hell she would." Granny gave a lopsided smile but she appreciated the sentiment. "How you keeping?"

"Tired." Graham lifted a shoulder in a shrug.

"The boy?"

"Worse. This is lunch for him."

"Ye shouldn't have sent him to school."

"We thought it would distract him."

"You and Emma? With the parenting skills of a buzzard between ye? I'll bet that'll go down a treat when her ladyship comes round."

"So long as she's alive to yell at me, that's fine." That miasma of emotions that he didn't want to list beat at him again and it was only Granny's steadying hand on his arm that stopped him from howling in an attempt to get it out.

"She'll be alright. You need a hand with anything, you know who to ask." Granny gave him a warning look to not take her up on it at his peril. He was actually incredibly glad that she'd offered to help.

He knew they all would but Granny was one of the few people he actually trusted to genuinely mean it. She might not like Regina –at all- but Granny was a roll-the-sleeves-back-and-get-stuck-in type. She'd do what she had to do. She'd do what she felt was right.

The moment between them was broken when the doorbell jangled again and Leroy stomped his way in. One of the dwarves, Grumpy if Regina's intelligence reports back in the Enchanted Forest or Henry's book were to be believed.

"Hey, Sheriff, she dead yet?"

Graham reacted entirely without thought. Something screamed in him and he just moved without meaning to.

His badge plinked across the bar when he tore it from his waistcoat and tossed it away. Granny's hand gripping his sleeve didn't even register. The widening of Grumpy's eyes told him that his expression must have made it clear how he felt about the dwarf right then.

Graham threw him out the door. Clean out the door.

He didn't even open it first.

Glass exploded everywhere, Ruby shrieked from behind the bar, a chorus of gasps rang out and Graham snarled low and intent. His boots crunched into glass shards when he stepped out of the doorframe where a glass window had been a second before and he stood on the porch of the diner, glaring down at Grumpy.

He had thrown him out the window, over the porch and bypassed the steps completely to land in a crumpled heap on the path leading to the sidewalk.

The dwarf was winded, his pride had taken a beating, but he was otherwise unharmed. He coughed and wheezed, trying to remember how to breathe with rhythm again. He stared up at Graham like he had never seen him before…or like he remembered seeing the Sheriff like that once upon a time…

"Get out of here before I arrest your sorry arse." Graham growled.

"For what?" Grumpy wheezed.

"Anything I want." Graham's voice was as sharp as the glass beneath his boots and Grumpy took the hint, scrambling away and limping off down the street.

Graham's chest heaved and he staggered when something burst in it. His hand went to his sternum and he blinked hard, his eyes watering with the feeling. Something powerful and warm and all consuming. Incredibly, Graham smiled.

Regina was awake.

He didn't know how he knew, he just did.

Graham turned back to the diner and stepped through the broken door again. His eyes landed on Granny first, her brows raised her mouth half open in shock.

"I'll pay for the door."

"Damn right you will." Granny recovered herself quickly.

"Is that order ready?" Graham moved back to the bar, pinning his badge back on, picking up his jacket and slinging it on.

"Here." Ruby spoke weakly, holding out a paper bag that smelled delicious and a cup holder with two huge cups in it.

"Thanks." Graham dug into his pocket for some cash and stopped when Granny just shoved the bag into his hand, stuffed the cupholder into the other and herded him towards the door.

"Just get, get before my charitable feelings disappear." She pointlessly opened the shattered door and pushed him out onto the steps.

"I really will pay for it." Graham turned back to her.

"I know, but I'm pretty mad at ye just now so you better get before _I _throw you out."

Graham nodded, smiling again, and then hurried down the steps and back towards the squad car. He was so happy because of the alien feeling in his chest that he was halfway towards the hospital before he thought to question it.

_**The Hospital**_

Regina awoke like a swimmer from the deep. She seemed to come from so far down in the black. Struggling up through the molasses of drugs and into the waking world. She was fairly out of it, she knew that much. She felt like she'd downed a half of her cider on an empty stomach. Her eyelids seemed to be as heavy as garage doors and it took her several moments of bleary fluttering to finally get them to cooperate. Even then her vision was out of focus for long blinking seconds until she finally managed to get one thing to resolve into a sharpened image.

Henry.

Regina's tortured body felt better than even morphine could hope to make it for one blinding instant. That way she felt every time she saw him. Before she thought about how much he hated her, or the lies she'd told him or the damage she'd done to everyone that he'd never forgive her for. Before she remembered that she'd lost him months ago.

Henry practically flew out of the seat he was hunched in and bounded into the side of the bed, gripping the metal frame that prevented her from falling out until his hands were lurid white with pressure.

"Mom." His voice was hoarse, his eyes wide and wet and she frowned at that.

He looked awful, her little boy, what had they been doing to him?

"Hen…" Regina wheezed the first time and he hurried to pick up a cup of water with a straw in it for her. She drank carefully, her tongue feeling like fur covered lead, and tried again with a weary smile. "Henry."

"Mom, you're awake." Henry beamed at her, clutching the cup of water in trembling hands.

He sniffed suddenly, his chin quivering, and blinked a lot.

"Oh, baby." Regina tried to lean towards him and blanched when pain sliced into her middle even through the haze of drugs. She sat back real quick but managed to lift her arms. "Come here."

Henry hesitated a moment, but only a moment, before looking down at the gate on the side of the bed. He couldn't immediately see how to lower it so he stood on the chair again and used it as a step to clamber over.

He was incredibly careful, moving around her like she was made of glass, and tucked himself into the narrow space afforded for him at her side. He curled beside her, his head resting on her upper arm and it wasn't until she lifted her other arm to comb his hair back out of his tearful eyes that she noticed it was in a cast.

"Oh." Regina blinked at the white plaster encasing her hand from knuckle to almost her elbow.

Ah, that was right, Graham had broken her wrist when he had thrown her. Her shoulder ached too much to hold her arm up and she carefully rested it against her stomach, moving it hurriedly when the wound in her middle screamed through the morphine again.

Regina absently curled her good arm around Henry's head and tangled those fingers in his hair instead. She turned her head and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

"Honey, you look awful."

Henry choked a laugh, snuggling as close as he dared to her.

"I'm so sorry." He spoke on a rush, the words jumbling from him so fast it took her a moment to translate.

"Sorry for what?" Regina frowned, her drugged brain not up to much right then.

"For making this happen." Henry's voice cracked.

"What?" Regina croaked, her own throat not up to matching the incredulity she felt.

"I wished it on you. You were right, every time I…"

"Oh, sweetheart, no." Regina hugged him as close as she could. "No. A bad man did this to me. Not you. This could never be your fault. You hear me? It was absolutely not your fault."

"But…"

"I mean it, Henry. No." Regina's voice became firmer when she had to rise to the challenge to comfort him. "Alright?"

He was quiet for long moments.

"Alright?" She jostled him a little.

"Alright." He whispered.

"Good." Regina sagged back into the pillows, suddenly exhausted. She stared up at the ceiling. Everything was hazy and she felt absolutely shit face wasted.

Morphine was good stuff.

"You need anything?" Henry kept his voice low.

"Just for you to stay there." Regina murmured, her eyes fluttering closed. Her fingers still steadily combing his hair let him know she hadn't succumbed to sleep again. "Stay right there, baby boy."

"I'm not a baby."

She huffed a breath in the shape of a chuckle.

"You'll always be my baby."

Henry would have bristled at that just two days previous but now it was a whole 'nuther ball game. Someone had tried to kill his mom. He hadn't realised until the moment he'd found out how much he didn't want to lose her. She was his mom. Yeah, she might be the Evil Queen too, but she was still his mom and he absolutely did NOT want her dead.

"Are you really going to be okay?" His voice sounded far smaller than he'd have liked.

"I would never leave you." Regina gave him a brief squeeze by way of comfort but he could tell the effort cost her.

Henry ached that he couldn't hold her back. That she was too hurt to even get a hug.

So he wriggled as close as he dared, rested his head against her cheek, and tumbled readily into sleep.

_**Later…**_

Graham ambled through the corridors of the hospital, winding his way to Regina's room, deep in thought.

What the hell had that been? That warm and fuzzy feeling?

Graham didn't think he'd EVER felt like that, even back when he'd had his whole heart and before he'd ever met Regina.

It had been such a bursting swell of emotion. It had broken over him like a wave. All-encompassing and completely immersive. For a moment, just a second, everything had seemed right and he'd forgotten everything else. It was a sanctuary in the terrible world he had found himself in.

Then it had been gone.

Graham had puzzled it out on the way over, caught between mulling it over and wanting to hurry back, because he knew Regina was awake. In his blood and his bones he knew she was awake.

Which came with that horrible grab-bag of emotions on its heels. He felt half crazed just at the prospect of seeing her again. She might have attempted to return his heart to him, but she held the cards now. A few choice words from her, an accusation there, a little hint for where to look for evidence, to have a good look at that knife that had so well ventilated her midsection…she'd land him in jail and come across as the saintly survivor.

On the other hand, he was glad she was alive. He'd known her for most of his life, been tangled with her for just as long. Foolishly, stupidly, darkly, perhaps, but they were joined all the same. She was a fixture now, a part of him and he of her…was he ready to cut that out of him?

Or was this all just crazy? Had she completely broken him after all those years and he really didn't know the difference between right and wrong? Was he so completely her pet that she had convinced him that her pleasure was worth anything –any degradation, any pain, any horror- on his part?

Was he better off just pulling himself up by his bootstraps, marching into that hospital room and finishing what he had started?

Graham arrived at Regina's room before he reached any kind of conclusion to any of his queries.

Well, he might not know what to do about Regina, but he did know what to do about the hungry little boy he'd left by her side.

Graham pushed open the door with one shoulder and swung his way into the private room. He twitched in surprise when he saw Henry absent from the chair he had left him in. It was quickly quelled by locating him in the bed tucked into his mother's side. Graham's eyes hungrily drank in every detail of the scene and all the air rushed out of his lungs when he tracked his gaze up to her face and found her eyes open, staring back into his.

He stood there, like that, frozen in the doorway, for what felt like hours.

Regina blinked languidly at him, her fingers combing idly through Henry's hair as he slept.

Graham finally sucked in a breath and pushed his way entirely into the room. He stood there, in the middle of the room, drinks in one hand, food in the other, and watched her watch him.

He felt _everything_.

Another flashfire of emotion so powerful it nearly knocked him off his feet. Something hot and lurid purple burst in his head, followed by a streak of pallid yellow fear veined with pulsing green terror.

It was her. It was coming from Regina. Graham could only stare at her. That cool, impassive mask never changed. He could see and hear the kick her heart gave at the sight of him and he could _feel_ that she felt something –felt a lot- for him…and not all of it hatred.

It was violent and powerful, this feeling in his chest roiling like a snake in a bag, but it wasn't hate. There was fear, but not really of him or what he had done. Pain, a lot of pain, not all of it physical but –underneath all that, deep, deep, down- was a small kernel of peace. Right down in the foundations of her, a little piece of calm that kept her functioning. Up until recently it had been Henry, but there was new scar tissue there, the boy had torn himself from deep within her by setting off on his quest.

She was feeling better though, better than she had in such a long time and it was because…because of Graham.

Graham blinked when he realised what sacrificing half his heart had gained him. He could feel what she felt. See past the façade, see the truth of her, she'd never be able to lie to him again.

Which was exactly why he would never tell her.

Regina knew nothing about half his heart being in her chest. She knew nothing of what he had done to save her life. As far as she was concerned, he was healthy and whole again. He had managed to resuscitate her and dragged her to the hospital where Whale had saved her life. That was what she believed had happened…and she would continue to believe it if Graham had anything to say about it.

And he was staring at her and it was beginning to make her nervous.

"It's good to see you awake." Graham dredged the words from somewhere.

Regina tilted her head and had the energy for a sardonic arch of an eyebrow.

Graham deliberately looked at Henry and she gave a subtle nod. As always, she could at least be trusted to do what she believed was best for Henry.

"It's good to be awake."

"We'll have to talk." Graham carefully approached her and circled around to set the food down on the raised table that spanned the bed.

"Now?"

"Later is fine…but it will need to be soon. Questions are being asked." Most stridently by Emma who wouldn't buy the whole phantom attacker unless Regina and Graham had their story straight.

Luckily for them all, it had rained that night. Torrential Maine weather pouring over the town and washing away any evidence that could be found outside. Not that there was any, but now it didn't have to be fabricated.

So that just left the blood in Graham's house. Splashed liberally over his bedroom floor, dripped and pattered along the hallway and spattered over the front steps and the interior of his truck.

Emma had studied all of it and Graham had been glad to see that she had very little idea as to what she was actually looking at. She didn't seem to notice that the blood only seemed to lead one way. Surely it would have spatter going in both directions if Regina had staggered into Graham's bedroom for aid? There was no other way it could have happened, after all. Regina must have dragged herself all the way into his bedroom because that was the only way all that blood could have gotten in there.

Of course, Graham had panicked a little, which was why there was so _much_ blood pooled there. Then he had been overcome with gallantry and scooped up the little Mayor, toting her out to his truck and driving bravely to the hospital with her.

Graham's stomach twisted at the thought but he shoved that down.

Of course, there was the question as to why Regina hadn't just hammered on the door? How had she even gotten in? There was no sign of forced entry, not that a woman in danger of rapidly bleeding out would have been able to force the door, even if she hadn't been a mere five-five and petite with it.

Simple. She had a key. She knew Graham was a heavy sleeper and he often didn't hear her when she knocked…it had become habit to invite herself in.

Which was utter bollocks, of course.

Regina hadn't come to _him_. He'd been at her beck and call and that had ever been the case. Of course, for the last twenty eight years, he'd liked it that way.

"I'll bet." Regina's rasping voice brought his attention back to her and he automatically moved to take the cup of water and the straw from the bedside table. He tended to her, letting her drink and then setting it aside.

He had completed the action without thought just as she had accepted it without the paranoia of poisoning that had accompanied her every other morsel back in the Enchanted Forest.

Graham wondered if she even realised that she trusted him so completely.

"Don't think about it right now. When you can breathe without the aid of drugs to dull the crippling pain, then we can revisit that night. Until then…I'll keep it at bay." Graham watched her face. Watched the way her impassive almost contemptuous expression belied the feelings he could feel seeping from her heart into his.

She liked that he wanted to protect her.

Graham found himself smiling and she frowned at him, confused. He felt a frisson of fear go through her, convinced that he was about to do something heinous to her. Annoyance hot on its heels when her thrumming panic was translated into a staccato bleeping from the machines she was hooked up to.

"Do you think you can eat?"

Regina brightened a little.

"What did you bring?"

"Chili cheeseburgers, fries, coleslaw…" Graham dug through the bags, laying the takeout boxes onto the table. "Milkshake, coffee…there's some green stuff that they always use to make the meal look bigger…"

"Salad garnish, dear." Regina absently corrected him, measuring the gratification of the greasy meal over the probably likelihood that she wouldn't be able to keep such rich food down.

Then again, the last time she'd been on this many drugs, it had been laudanum. Morphine's older and much less refined cousin. She might be able to eat a little without immediately seeing it again.

"I can go and find some toast if you'd prefer." Graham offered after a minute.

"I'm fine. You eat first." Regina dismissed it and turned her attention back to Henry. "Sweetheart? Wake up, Graham has brought you lunch."

Henry grumbled and snuggled closer for a moment. When Regina smiled at the movement, her expression –for once- completely matched the blast of feeling that rocketed through her.

"Come on, chili cheeseburger, your favourite."

Henry blearily opened one eye.

"No pickles?"

"I would never dare." Graham said solemnly and wheeled the table up the bed, closer to the boy.

Henry sat up slowly, as if he'd been in the same position for years. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stared sightlessly at the food for a moment. Regina rested her good hand against his back, rubbing small circles there, and gentled him back into the real world.

Her poor little boy. She'd put him through the wringer with this stunt of hers.

She had known better, known that Graham would kill her the first opportunity he got. That he'd bottled it at the last instant was something she hadn't foreseen. Neither had she seen how harshly it would have affected Henry. Looking at him now, it became nearly impossible to believe that she had ever thought he didn't care at all for her. How could she have missed it so completely? He loved her still…and she had nearly ripped that away from him.

She had always been cruel and selfish, always, but she had promised herself that she would never be that way with Henry.

Another promise broken. Was she even surprised anymore?

Henry twisted to look down at her and she found a smile from somewhere for him.

"How you feeling?"

"Better." Lies. "Eat something, sweetheart."

"You want some?" Henry folded his legs neatly and pulled his Styrofoam carton closer.

"I don't think that's a good idea. Go ahead." She managed another smile and tried to sit up straighter, wincing when pain ravaged her.

"Here." Graham was suddenly there, leaning closer and sliding his arms around her waist gently. Regina wound her arms about his neck after a moment of hesitation and Graham scooted her higher up the bed to make room for Henry. When Graham released her, both of them a little uncomfortable with the familiarity that shouldn't be there anymore, Regina cast a glance over at Henry and stilled when she found him watching them both carefully.

Henry munched a few French fries, watching with an unblinking stare and Regina cleared her throat. Considering what to say.

"I'm cool with it."

Regina blinked at the boy.

"You and Graham." Henry shrugged. "You never needed to hide it from me. I'm not jealous or anything."

Regina pressed her lips together and hummed in the back of her throat.

"Good." Graham flopped down onto the chair and dug into his own sack of lunch. The curse might be –well- a curse, but chili cheeseburgers from Granny's were very nearly worth it. "Because I'm not going anywhere."

"Really?" Regina arched a brow at him, her tone dangerous.

"Really." Graham nodded, his mouth full of burger. "Someone is going to have to look after you. Unless you want Henry taking time off school?"

Regina's jaw clenched.

"I don't need help."

"Aye, just you wait until you try to get dressed without tearing your stitches. Then we'll see who's so independent." Graham snorted and sipped his coffee.

Regina opened her mouth to tell him where to get off but Henry silenced her with a pleading look.

"Mom, please?"

"Henry…"

"Will you please let someone help you? Just this once? I'm not big enough to do it myself." He wrinkled his nose. "Besides, I don't think you want me dressing you."

Regina's mouth twitched, fighting down a smile despite herself.

"I'd pick horrible clothes." Henry assured her.

Regina heaved a sigh and winced when her wound tugged. She tapped the clicker with her finger and the morphine drip gave a little hiss as a dose was administered.

"I still don't like it."

Graham? Help her? She knew the Sheriff wanted to do nothing of the kind. He wanted her where he could keep an eye on her.

Now that he was whole again and had his will, now that he knew about the curse, she was certain he was going to throw his lot in with the Charmings and do everything he could do bring about her downfall. She didn't know if he would reveal to Henry that he knew that the curse was real, but she was certain he was going to help the boy with his plot to break it.

Fantastic.

She had already proved she couldn't kill him. Hell, she hadn't even been able to help him without nearly getting killed herself. She felt like she'd been sawn in half and, besides, he was bigger, stronger and faster than she…she was losing. She was losing and there was nothing that she could do about it.

Still, there is a difference between choosing to surrender and being conquered. Right then, it was a difference that Regina clung to.

"Alright, you can help me."

"My eternal gratitude." Graham gave a mocking half bow in his seat and then went back to shovelling food in his mouth. It was the first proper meal he'd had in days. "I'll pack some things and move them over to your house this afternoon."

"You'll what?" Regina's voice would have given polar bears chills.

"Graham would have to stay with us." Henry licked at a blob of sauce in the corner of his mouth. "What if he had to get you a glass of water or something in the night? Or you fell over? You're tiny for a grown up but I'm still not big enough to lift you." Henry's tone was admonishing.

"I am _not_ tiny."

"Practically pocket sized, darlin'." Graham smirked and drank his coffee. "I could lift you with one arm. You are a little half pint of Mayor, you are."

Regina sank deeper into the bed, half in defeat and half in sulk, and glared sluggishly at him. Wow, that morphine was fast acting.

Graham watched her succumb to it and noticed that it was becoming easier to put the brave face on for Henry now that he was more certain that Regina was actually going to survive his attempt at murdering her.

This was hellish, from every angle it was an awful situation, but there was no reason not to enjoy this kind of suffering from her. She'd be under his control. Reliant on him. it would be nice to have the tables turned on her and even better to have her where he could keep an eye on her.

Graham had no idea how much power she actually had over the town, though it certainly no longer extended over the Sheriff's department, but in the coming days and weeks, he was going to make it his mission to find out.

Oh yes, Regina Mills was stuck with him.


	5. Chapter 5

**I have no idea what i'm doing with this. **

**So i'm trying to update frequently but not actually DO much so that i don't write myself into a corner. Fantastic. Any hints, tips or suggestions as to where you would like this story to go are appreciated and may even be taken into account :D. **

**As for the flashbacks, they will probably be a regular thing and used to lighten the story as it IS going to get dark again. All sorts of things to happen, just ideas at the moment but you know me, not happy unless there's a monster or six chasing after Regina and forcing her to be badass. Graham will too, of course, be opening his own cans of Close Your Eyes This Is Going To Hurt and we'll get to see just how terrifying a Huntsman would be in a country filled with forests. **

**I've read the graphic novel of the Evil Queen and the Huntsman and am amused by it at the same time as being irritated by it. Bits may be taken from there and perhaps from the ORIGINAL script of Snow White and the Huntsman, the movie. Because Queen Ravenna is BAMF. **

**Aside from that, thanks very much from all the reviewers that i cannot reply to as they are without accounts. I will reply to them here if y'all put a name to your review. Doesn't have to be anything overly dramatic or nothing just something other than 'Guest'. Thanks of course to everyone that has names reviewing too. If i haven't replied, it's because i forgot or am a lazy ass :D**

**So, without further ado, **

**read, love, review.**

**Chapter 5 – So It Begins**

_**Then, Year 5 of the Curse**_

Regina had first realised he was different when he had noticed.

He had noticed that she'd left.

The curse had been torment. Day in, day out, year after year the same. She had been crazed to begin with and then she'd been locked into a never ending loop of banality with the faces of the people she had thought to subjugate turned her tormentors.

So she'd left.

Packed her things into her car, filled the tank with gas, gathered her documentation, got behind the wheel and started to drive. It hadn't really mattered where. Away was what she had been going for and it had been wonderful.

To start with.

It had started slowly. A shortness of breath when she least expected it. Dizzy spells harsh enough to knock her on her ass in the middle of a crowded store. Then the pain had begun.

She'd been gone barely a week before she'd realised it was going to kill her.

Withdrawal, she had realised as she'd driven erratically back towards what was now destined to be her home for the rest of her days. She might not have command over the magic in Storybrooke, but it seemed to have a tight grip on her. Tight enough for her to physically need it.

She supposed it made sense. Before casting the curse, Regina had been steeped in magic. Now that she had been magically frozen in a state of biological ennui, she had to be made of more magic than she was blood and bone. That and the curse needed her to function. It would only make sense that –as a curse- it would make her suffer for abandoning it.

The black Mercedes roared past the green sign welcoming her back to her prison so fast that it wobbled in the backdraft. She was barely in control of it behind the wheel, careening down the twisting road, into the valley, into the town.

She'd had no clear idea of where she was going until her car mounted the kerb outside the diner. Granny's.

Regina literally fell out the door, landing hard with a groan of pain.

Eat something. She had to eat something.

She had to eat something from Storybrooke. The food was replenished magically. Generated by the curse, probably what kept everybody else in the constant stupor of looping memories they were snared in. If she ate the food, it would get the magic back into her system that much faster.

Regina forced her legs under her, she'd survived agony before, she'd do it again. She had to use the white picket fence outside the diner to haul herself upright but she _did it_.

Unfortunately for her, she had no idea how to get from the fence to the diner itself without damn well crawling.

"Regina!"

Regina blearily turned, seeing a fuzzy shape advancing on her in a symphony of brown.

It was the smell that alerted her to his identity.

Earth and coffee and pine and syrup.

Graham.

"God, love, what happened to you?!" His arms came around her and he scooped her up off the ground with an ease that would have been alarming had it not been exactly what she needed. "I'm taking you to the hospital."

"No!" She found the strength to speak from somewhere. "Food. I need…to eat. Now." Regina could barely see straight, she clutched at his jacket and tried feebly to tug him towards the diner.

"Food?" Graham hesitated.

"I need…_please._"

"Alright, hold on." Graham spun on his heel and carried her up into the diner. He kicked open the door with one foot and started to bark orders like the captain of the guard he had once been.

"Granny, I need juice or soda and a pastry, pie, anything that's sugary. NOW!"

Regina was blearily aware of people rushing around her, sent to scurrying by the sheriff's apparently non-existent temper flaring to life. She was in and out until his hand took hers, pushing a glass of something into her grip and helping her lift it to her mouth when she shook too hard.

Regina gulped it down. It was orange soda, she hated orange, but she drank it like water after a trek across the desert. She drank until she had to breathe or drown in it and then flopped back against Graham's chest, gasping for breath.

"Here, eat this." Graham practically shoved the doughnut into her mouth and Regina fell on it like she hadn't eaten in months.

The relief was almost immediate. She felt the stomach cramps lessen, her vision ceased to blur and the tremors died away to almost nothing.

It was only then she noticed her audience.

She had apparently arrived back in the diner in time for the lunch rush and everyone –_everyone-_ had eyes only for her.

Regina was intensely aware of how she looked, rumpled, dishevelled and now covered in sugar. She was also sitting on the Sheriff's lap.

"Bugger off, the lot of ye." Graham all but snarled and she blinked at the tone.

Everyone else did a hell of a lot more than blink. As one, they found places elsewhere to be and other things to stare at. As soon as they had a modicum of privacy, Graham's hand spanned the back of her neck and he turned her to face him.

"Where the hell have you been?!"

"What?" Regina stared at him.

"You've been gone for days! I was about to send out bloody search parties. Where did you GO?!"

"I…" Regina was caught completely unawares by his tone. It had been _decades_ since anyone had dared speak to her in such a way and from her Huntsman of all people?

Regina grunted in surprise when his arms engulfed her and he clutched her close to his chest.

"I was so bloody worried." He spoke into her hair. "Don't ever do that again."

"You have no right to…" Regina shoved at his chest. Trying to put some distance between them. Put him in his place.

"I have every right." He all but snarled and she actually gaped at him. He was so biddable here. Never fought her on anything. More of a pet than he had ever been. What the hell was this?

"I'm the sodding Sheriff. I am responsible for the safety of everyone in this town _including_ stubborn little Mayors that can't be arsed to leave a sodding NOTE to tell their lover where they're fucking going!"

"Don't you swear at me." She hissed. "I am beholden to you in no way at all."

"You've made that _abundantly_ clear." Graham growled at her but his arm was still tight about her waist. She was pointedly not noticing that she had yet to pull away from him. "A week, Regina. A week without sight of hide nor hair of you. I went to your house. You'd taken all your clothes. Were you really going to leave without a word?"

"I…you noticed?"

"What?" Graham stared down at her like she was the one not making sense. "Of course I noticed! Even had I not woken up to you being _gone_ one morning, you're kind of a public figure."

"But no one else noticed." Regina murmured.

"Well, you know them, they only notice when things start to go poorly. Then they can blame you for it."

Regina blinked. That had been dangerously close to a personality there.

"You noticed me…"

"I notice you every day. Even when you're not around." Graham huffed a sigh and muttered the next. "Especially then."

Regina felt a pang in her chest and pressed a hand to her heart, wincing at the pressure. He saw her pain and reacted, wrapping her in his arms and tugging her close.

Regina…let him.

Despite the audience, despite the public setting and the stares, despite how she was supposed to be strong, unbeatable, untouchable…she let him hold her. She let him hold her and she tilted into his chest and rested her head on his shoulder and buried her face in his neck. Slowly, treacherously, her arms crept around him and she held him back.

"You remembered me."

He chuckled, resting his chin on top of her head.

"Love, you are unforgettable."

Regina smiled and let herself pretend –what was the point in all this if she couldn't do at least that after all? She rested in his arms and let herself pretend that he was truly hers. That he really did care. That he was actually happy to see her and that he was on her side.

Just for now, just for today, she would pretend.

By the next day –for him at least- it was as if none of it had happened.

She remembered.

_**Now, the Hospital…**_

It wasn't even a week after the whole stabbing incident that Regina was discharged from the hospital.

Whale was stunned at how quickly she had healed. Regina hadn't been.

The curse might be faltering, breaking, but there was still enough of it left to reset its caster back to her original settings. The same spell that had kept them all frozen at the same age was at work when it came to healing the hole in her midriff. She was by no means ready to go running any marathons any time soon, but she had been weaned off the morphine and onto something lighter. Of course, any thoughts on how quick her recovery had been were put into perspective when she tried to dress herself.

Quick recovery or not, it had still been only five days since she'd had a hunting knife investigating her thoracic cavity.

Graham had brought her clothes twenty minutes ago and all she had managed was her underwear. She had point blank refused to even attempt to bend over and put on her stockings as reaching back to clasp her bra shut had nearly knocked her out cold.

As it was, she was grey and trembling but stubbornly refused to give up. She was going home. Today. She'd had more than enough of being put on display for the masses and if she had to dodge one more visit from Sidney, she was going to bite someone to death.

She very nearly whimpered in relief when she found that Graham had brought her a dress that she could simply pull on with a minimum of wiggling.

That relief was short lived when she realised it wasn't _her_ dress. She had never seen it before. It was her style, a pencil skirt that would hug everything, the bodice resembling a waistcoat with a button down front and a dramatic collar that would span her from shoulder to shoulder…but it was blue.

A deep jewel blue with a silver frost-like pattern that made it shimmer. Far more eye catching than she would usually wear. Purple ribbon edged the collar and the slanted hem of the skirt.

Closer examination revealed that there was no tag, it had been hand stitched –in fact- it had been handmade.

Regina was delighted and suspicious all at the same time. However, further rummaging in the bag Graham had brought her revealed nothing but pantsuits and skirt and shirt ensembles that she deemed far too much effort. So she unbuttoned the bodice, torturously dragged it on over her legs and found the mystery dress to fit her with a surprisingly flattering ease. She hadn't had something this well-tailored since the Enchanted Forest and that had been achieved through magic.

Regina mustered a set of black high heels, which were familiar to her, and a black blazer but put neither on as they required a level of movement that she hadn't steeled herself for yet. She tortured herself into packing everything away into the bag and then just sat and tried not to topple over with exhaustion.

She was almost regretting chasing the nurse out of the room –insisting she didn't need help- when a brief knock heralded her next trial of the day.

"You decent?"

Graham didn't wait for an answer and Regina swallowed her vicious retort when she saw the reason for his banter.

Miss Swan.

Regina wanted very much to groan.

"Mom!" Henry brightened her mood when he pushed past Emma and hurled himself up onto the bed beside Regina. "You ready to come home?"

"More than." Regina lifted her arm, ignoring the bite of pain to her sternum, and smoothed his hair back. Taking that as permission, Henry favoured her with a gentle hug.

Her little man had taken to treating her like she was made of glass and she found it almost as adorable as she did infuriating. She was not supposed to be breakable in his eyes. She was supposed to be strong, someone he could lean on, not someone who would have to lean on him just to get into the car.

"Graham's gonna drive us home." Henry smiled.

"Ah. How delightful." Regina rubbed his shoulders and looked over at Miss Swan, who looked about as welcome as a bastard at a family reunion. She rubbed at her arm and offered some kind of grimace that might have been mistaken for a smile.

"Emma's here for some follow up questions." Graham answered the unspoken query. He approached the bed and Regina tried to calm the twisting her stomach gave. He smirked at her as if aware of the storm of emotion swirling through her.

Her heart felt like lead in her chest.

"_More_ questions?" Regina folded one leg over the other when he went to one knee and picked up one of her heels.

"Aye. Questions that are better left between women, apparently." Graham glanced up at her, his hands gentle on her ankle and calf to switch her legs over so he could slip the other heel on for her.

Regina's chin kicked up and she looked at Emma –who looked as uncomfortable as she felt- with dawning comprehension. Well, she supposed it was standard procedure.

"Henry, why don't you help Graham take my things to the car? Miss Swan should be done by the time you get back."

"Aye, Henry, your mom's bags are heavy." Graham's hand rested briefly on Regina's knee as he stood, Regina felt a thrill go through her when his fingers glanced just under the hem of her skirt and she looked sharply away from him when his eyes found hers.

She should be over this. More than over it. He had tried to kill her, very nearly succeeded in fact. Not only that, she was recovering from his attempted murder and should not be entertaining the prospect of how soon she was recovered enough for all the ideas that his fingers at her hemline generated.

Graham briefly squeezed her knee and rose to his full height, scooping her toiletries bag up and passing it to Henry.

"You take the heavy one." He told the boy and hefted Regina's holdall with casual strength.

Henry clutched his burden to his chest and hopped down off the bed. He smiled back at Regina, told her he'd be _right_ back and followed Graham out of the room.

Leaving Regina with just Miss Swan and a hefty dose of awkward silence for company.

Regina heaved a sigh that finished on a grimace when her wound protested. Good grief, she'd never missed magic more.

Emma cleared her throat.

"Are you alright?"

Regina opened her eyes and favoured the younger woman with an arched eyebrow.

"I mean, you look like you're in pain. Do you need a doctor?"

"No." Regina thought about getting off the bed and realised falling flat on her face would only add insult to injury. "I'm fine."

"Right." Emma nodded and tacked on hurriedly. "Good."

"Out with it, Miss Swan. I haven't all day." Well, she did, but she didn't want that to give the deputy any ideas.

"I need to ask you some questions with regards to the attack." Emma slipped into a more professional tone.

"I already gave my statement to the Sheriff."

"Yes, but I need one too. Sheriff Humbert isn't exactly impartial. He's technically a witness too."

Regina favoured her with a stony glare but finally nodded. They had rehearsed their story. Regina knew more than enough about telling the truth and still not being honest to get around this mysterious lie detection skill of Emma's. It would be a pain in the ass –something Swan excelled at- but Regina could handle it.

"Ask away."

"Where did the attack happen?" Emma surprised Regina by pulling out small tape recorder and setting it on the table at the end of the bed where both of them might clearly be heard.

"I'm not sure exactly where. It's a little hazy, but close to the Sheriff's house." All true.

"At what time?"

"About two in the morning."

"You were walking?"

"Yes, I'd had some of my cider." Regina stalled the next question. "Not drunk, but over the legal limit."

"What were you doing out so late?"

"As you well know, Graham and I have been…troubled. I was going to see if I could fix things."

"At two in the morning?"

"I had to wait until Henry was asleep. He's been staying up later and later reading that book of his. Plotting my downfall." Regina gave a slight smirk which Emma didn't share. "Once he was asleep, I left him a note on the fridge telling him that he could call my cell if he needed to get to me. As per our agreement."

"You leave him in the middle of the night?"

"I'm the Mayor, burst water pipes, fires, gas leaks, my job only pretends to be nine to five. If I have to go, I tell him that I am gone and where he can get hold of me." Regina's tone was clipped, daring Emma to pick a fight. "I don't make a habit of it."

"This wasn't exactly a town emergency."

"When you have a question pertaining to the case, feel free to ask it, Miss Swan."

Chastised, Emma cleared her throat and glanced out the window, recovering herself.

"Alright, so, you were walking to Sheriff Humbert's house, you were attacked close by at two in the morning. Can you describe your assailant?"

"It was a man. He surprised me so I didn't have time to get a proper look. He grabbed my arm first," Regina held up her cast to show which, "then he threw me to the ground. Doctor Whale tells me that's when my shoulder must have dislocated. He picked me up by my hair and stabbed me."

Emma was watching her carefully.

"You seem very…calm about all this."

"What you see and what I feel are not always synonymous, Miss Swan. You have no right to view my personal feelings about anything. Why would I share them with you?"

"Fair enough." Emma toyed with the recorder a moment, shifting it so it was closer to Regina. "Did you see anything about him? A distinguishing feature? Scars? Tattoos? Anything."

"Nothing. I didn't even see his clothes. The only thing I saw with any clarity was his eyes and…" Regina halted then, haunted by what she had seen in Graham's eyes, she bit her lip without meaning to and then shook it off. "They were vacant."

"Vacant?"

"Devoid of reason or sense." Regina clarified, trying not to show how much that had terrified her. "Mad. His eyes were…mad."

Emma watched her for a long moment, surprised to have seen the Mayor affected by anything, let alone madness. Especially when Emma considered her to be madder than a bag of cats herself.

"I have to ask; were you assaulted in any other way?"

"Are you asking if I was raped?" Regina didn't enjoy the flinch it evinced from the other woman.

"Or any kind of sexual assault." Emma nodded.

"No." Regina shook her head. "He did not rape me or grope me or anything of the kind. Being stabbed was more than enough."

Emma looked away and clenched her jaw.

"That's not what I meant."

"I know." Regina's voice –surprisingly even to herself- held no satisfaction in making Emma uncomfortable about such things.

"Fine." Emma shook it off and continued. "So he stabbed you and just…left?"

"He must have thought I was dead or dying." Regina shrugged and regretted the move when her stitches tugged. "I don't remember him leaving but I don't remember how I could have gotten to Graham's house in such a state either." Which was true only because it hadn't happened at all.

"You let yourself in?"

"Yes."

"With a key?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"What?" Regina blinked, that one had thrown her.

"The key. The one that Sheriff Humbert gave to you to get into his house. Where is it?"

Regina was silent a long moment, caught completely off guard. She hadn't expected Swan to focus on that one detail when there were so many other blood soaked ones on offer.

"I have no idea." Regina slowly shook her head. "I haven't seen it." Another thing that was true because it didn't exist. Regina might well have a key, she had keys for everywhere, but Graham had never _given_ her one.

"Okay." Emma nodded, appearing to make a mental note. "So you got to his house, through his front door, then what?"

"I made my way to his bedroom and woke him. He took me to the hospital."

"You had the knife sticking out of you the whole time?"

"It was the only thing that stopped me from bleeding to death."

"Can you explain why Sheriff Humbert's fingerprints are all over it?"

"I imagine mine are as well." Regina frowned. "I wanted to pull it out, he had to stop me."

"Why would you want to pull it out? If you knew it was plugging the wound." Emma tilted her head.

"Have you ever been stabbed, Miss Swan?"

"No."

"Then believe me when I tell you that the experience is far from enjoyable. It is one thing to academically know that the knife perforating _my chest_ was ironically the only thing keeping me alive, it is quite another to be able to withstand the agony of it being there. I wanted it out because it hurt more than anything else I've ever had to endure."

"That was a lie."

Regina raised her eyebrows and Emma blinked, surprised at herself. She pressed her lips together.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean…"

"Fair enough." Regina spoke over her. "I have survived worse but it ranks in the top five."

Emma silenced herself so quickly her teeth clipped together and she nodded once.

"One more thing…"

Emma silenced herself when the door swung open to allow Graham and Henry back in.

"Are you guys finished?" Henry looked between the two women.

"No." Emma spoke before Regina could. "I have one more question."

Graham looked unhappy, straightening from the wheelchair he had pushed into the room, but settled his hand on Henry's shoulder, prepared to steer him outside again.

"Out with it, Miss Swan." Regina ordered her.

"Do you know why you were attacked?"

Regina tilted her head, surprised – now that she thought on it- that the question hadn't come up before now.

"Aren't you supposed to ask me if I have any enemies?"

"I don't have time for the list." Emma spoke before she could stop herself.

"Emma!" Henry hissed at her.

"It's alright. I know I'm not well liked." Regina smiled for Henry and looked about herself, plotting how to get down off the bed without crumpling into a heap on the floor. "In answer to your question; I cannot know exactly, but I suspect he attacked me because he was very –very- angry and wanted to hurt me."

Henry stepped closer to her and she smiled for him.

"Don't worry. I'm alright." Regina carefully, very carefully, lowered herself to the floor and tested her weight on her legs. She wobbled and leaned against the bed rather than try and walk just yet. "Now, if you're done?"

"For now." Emma scooped up the tape recorder and ended the recording, stuffing it into her pocket.

"Good." Regina reached for her blazer and pulled it carefully on, freezing when Graham stepped forward and helped her into it. His arms going around her in a move that was as familiar as it was rattling.

"I've filled out all the paperwork." Graham murmured to her, straightening her blazer gently –certainly not the first time he had helped her dress- and used it to tug her upright and away from the bed. Measuring the way she weaved a little with dark eyes. "You can go home."

"About time." Regina waved him out of her way and worked herself up into trying to walk. She stilled when Graham pushed the wheelchair in front of her. "No."

"Regina…"

"No." She spoke more firmly.

"Just to the car."

"No." Regina reiterated. "I've been seen as enough of an invalid as it is. I don't need it."

She might need a Tramadol or six by the time she got to the car, but she wasn't going in a damn wheelchair.

"Mom, please."

Regina softened a little but didn't waver.

"Henry, I've spent the last four days lying, sitting or variations along the theme. I'm done with it. I want to walk."

"If you pull your stitches you'll wind up right back here." Graham told her coolly. Unimpressed with her antics.

Which made her mad.

"I'm not planning on doing any cartwheels, I'm just going to walk to the damn car!" Regina mustered herself under control abruptly. Where had that come from? She was usually better at controlling herself than that.

"Fine." Graham straightened and pushed the wheelchair out of the way. "You won't go in the chair?"

"No." Regina would have folded her arms over her chest had the very prospect not made her ache.

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

"I can't talk you into it.?"

"Not a chance."

"Well," Graham glanced down at Henry with an almost smirk on his mouth, "I suppose there's only one thing left to do."

Regina squeaked in surprise when he suddenly scooped her up into his arms and held her as easily as if she weighed no more than a kitten.

"Grahamputmedown!" Regina clutched at his neck.

"Why? Does it hurt?"

"No, it's…"

"Then I don't care." Graham turned, heading for the door and Regina gasped in outrage even as Emma opened the door for them to let them out into the hallway.

"This is embarrassing." Regina hissed at him.

"Not as embarrassing as falling flat on your face in front of the entire hospital, I'll wager." Graham smirked at her.

Bastard.

"Put me down. Now." Regina tried to command him and he just snorted at her.

"You don't control me, pet."

"Pet?!" Her voice lowered to a dangerous growl.

"Pet." He smirked at her, speaking in a tone only she could hear. "The leash is on the other neck, majesty. You'd best learn to live with it."

"You'll pay for that." She warned him.

"I've paid for more than enough. It's time to collect." Graham strode out of the hospital hallways and into the lobby, ignoring the stares they attracted.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means I'm in charge," Graham met her furious gaze with a smug one of his own, "and you're not."


	6. Chapter 6

**Urgh, I hate writing right now. **

**Nothing is going right. I'm ready to start a proper temper tantrum. Like a four year old, flailing about on the floor, the works. **

**Anyway, here we are with SOMETHING.**

**Hopefully it will tide you over until I remember that I'm good again. **

**Blergh.**

**Chapter 6 – A Darker Motive**

He was watching her.

She could feel it.

Constantly.

It was driving her crazy.

…er

Driving her crazi_er_.

Regina sat on the couch, Henry nestled close beside her, and stared sightlessly at whatever movie he'd picked to keep her occupied.

She hadn't taken in one syllable of dialogue. She was far too aware of Graham prowling around in the background. He padded about the house in that predatory silent way of his, stalking shadows and checking the doors and windows.

It was an old habit, she knew. He had been captain of her guard back in the Enchanted Forest. He had also been her primary bodyguard. Responsible for both her safety and that of her borders.

It would seem old habits would die hard.

Then again, it could all be a show for Henry. There wasn't _really_ a knife wielding maniac out there thirsting for Regina's blood.

Oh no, he was right there in her living room with her.

Still, Graham was doing a good impression of keeping watch over her and her son. He had spent the last half hour or so doing laps of the house, checking on them every so often and heckling Regina to take her pills like a good little invalid. Ordering her to stay on the couch and let him and Henry fetch her anything she needed. Escorting her even to the bathroom.

Fair enough, she had been contemplating digging to freedom with her toothbrush at that point, but he would hardly know that.

Barely an afternoon under his watch and he was already smothering her.

The Huntsman had been _there._ A constant shadow in the corner of her eye. Apparently acting her nursemaid but in reality her jailor and she already felt the walls closing in.

Regina buried her hand completely in Henry's hair so suddenly he squeaked in surprise but –upon looking up and seeing her staring sightlessly at the television- decided he could put up with it. She petted his head, the slightest frown marring her marble still face, and seemed completely lost to whatever thoughts plagued her.

"Mom? You okay?"

Regina blinked and shook herself, not unaware of Graham's shadow suddenly looming in the doorway at the sound of concern from Henry.

"Yes. I'm fine." Regina noticed where her hand was and she extricated herself from his hair, smoothing it down with a different kind of frown on her face. "You need a haircut, young man."

Henry smiled, glad to finally have something normal from her.

"Yeah."

"We can go after school tomorrow." She decided, jumping on the excuse to be out of the house.

Surrounded by witnesses and not left to the mercy of the Huntsman for any longer than necessary. She had come to the realisation that he had saved her for the simple reasoning of needing her alive so she could suffer. She had a fair idea of what he had planned for her –probably the same thing she had done to him for decades- and he would need her healthy for it if he planned on her surviving the first night…but those would just be the nights. During the day, at least, she planned to stay in public view as much as possible so that he wouldn't be alone to toy with her.

"You going to be well enough for me to leave you alone?" Henry tilted his head.

Regina wavered, her desire not to be left alone with the cold blooded killer looming about her house only outmatched by her need to be a decent mother. To be decent at something. Anything.

"I'll be fine."

"She'll be with me, Henry." Graham appeared so suddenly at the back of the couch that she flinched and then winced when her stitches pulled. "Sorry, pet." Graham's hand spanned the back of her head and stroked her hair once. Pulling away before she could turn and snap at him with her teeth.

She bristled at the name he now had for her but didn't rise to the bait.

Was that his endgame? To _annoy_ her into revealing that she knew all about the curse in front of Henry?

Well he was going to have a long wait ahead of him. She had lived with Snow and Leopold for years before she'd had the right opportunity to kill her husband and then the freedom to move onto his daughter. She might be a psychopath but she was under her own control and she had the patience of a continent.

"Don't you get Wednesdays off?" Henry looked up at Graham.

"Yeah but Emma's got the night shifts right now so I can be here." Graham folded his arms on the back of the couch and bent at the waist so he could prop his chin on his crossed forearms.

"So how are you supposed to look after mom?" Henry's face hardened in a frown and Regina cut in before Graham could overtake every decision in her life in a single afternoon.

"I can sit in a drug induced stupor in the station as easily as I can here, Henry. I won't be alone." Regina smiled at him and ignored Graham's dark eyes burning into the side of her head. She _would_ be alone with Graham in the station house but at least they would be in a public place.

"There's beds in the cells." Graham agreed easily enough. Smirking. "And locking you up behind bars is probably the only way I'll have to keep you from sneaking back to the office."

Henry giggled and Regina arched a brow at one and then the other.

"Really? Do you truly want to be stuck with me for ten hours with nothing to entertain me?"

"We can play cards." Graham's smirk didn't dissipate.

"I can do paperwork!" Regina was dangerously close to a huff. "It's not exactly strenuous. Nothing happens unless this one goes off on another one of his…operations!" Regina waved at Henry. Both Henry and Graham stared at her and Regina looked between them. Her gaze rested on Henry when his eyes were wide and he had paled. "What is it?"

"I'm not doing that stuff anymore!" The words burst from Henry raggedly. "I don't wanna break the curse. Not if it hurts you." Henry's eyes were wet but he sniffed hard and didn't let the tears fall.

Graham looked alarmed at the hairpin turn the conversation had taken and glanced wildly at Regina. She looked surprised but not at a loss as to what to do.

"Henry, I told you," Regina rested her good hand on the boy's shoulder, "this wasn't your fault. Nothing you did caused this."

"But I tried to break the curse and…and…you nearly died."

"Oh, come now," Regina took on a no nonsense tone when his tears began to fall, "I'm far tougher than that. One man? Please. It would take an army to steal me from you." Regina used the corner of one of the blankets that Henry had buried her under to wipe at his cheeks.

"You really got hurt, mom."

"Yes. I did," Regina glanced sideways at Graham, "but Graham saved me and now I have lots of lovely pills that let me see pink elephants rather than feel any pain." Regina tapped him on the nose with the now damp corner of blanket. Henry gave a watery smile.

His face grew serious again.

"You're really going to be okay?" He reached out and took her hand suddenly. "You promise?"

Regina's eyes betrayed her and she looked at Graham. Yes, she would probably be fine, had it not been for one Huntsman intent on extracting his revenge from her one bloodied piece at a time. Graham frowned at her, as if trying to figure out what she was thinking, and she tore her gaze from his to look at Henry.

"Of course. Nothing would make me leave you." She ignored previous attempts at suicide by Huntsman. That had been mistake, she knew that now. She'd take any pain for Henry. She glanced at Graham again.

Any pain.

Graham frowned at her, displeased by what he saw in her eyes apparently and straightened up from the back of the couch.

"Right, I think it's time for all good little boys and Mayors to be in bed. Henry, you get the television and the lights and I'll get your mother."

"'Kay." Henry sniffled one last time and threw himself from the couch, glad to have something to do.

"You'll what?" Regina spoke archly.

"You really want to try all those stairs, knackered as you are?" Graham rounded the couch and stood over her. "If you fall over even once, you're going straight back to the hospital."

Regina glared at him for a long moment and then heaved a resigned sigh. She wordlessly held up her arms and ignored his smirk of triumph.

This was to be a war between them. She would fight him on everything and he would try to conquer her every movement and they would forever keep score. They would tally victories and losses with neurotic care until long after they had forgotten what they were fighting about.

Graham took note of his points so far and stooped, sliding his arms around her waist and under her knees, lifting her carefully. She huffed out a pained breath but shook her head when he looked at her sharply.

"Just bent the wrong way." She straightened her spine and breathed a sigh of relief, even though it was an exhausting tension to hold herself that way.

Graham shifted his hold, making it a bit easier on her so that she pretty much just sat on one arm and he only steadied her with the other. They were a silent procession, heading up the stairs and Graham might have set her feet on the floor when they reached the landing at the top but he didn't release her until she was propped against the doorframe of Henry's room.

"You going to be alright here while I make up the guest bed?" Graham ducked his head a little so they were at eye level. He challenged her to lie to him.

"I should be fine so long as I don't do anything strenuous." Regina clipped at him and let out a slow sigh. "Like…breathe heavily."

Graham smirked and turned to head down the hallway and leave mother and son to bid each other goodnight, stalling when he nearly walked into Henry.

"You guys don't have to pretend anymore. You know that, right?" Henry looked between both adults. "I'm _fine_ with Graham being here, mom. I'm not weirded out by you sleeping next to each other or nothing. I never meant to come between you."

Graham twisted to look at Regina and she blinked. Caught off guard by having to make this decision. She had assumed that Henry wouldn't question them taking separate beds but apparently he felt more guilt than she had realised. Regina met Graham's questioning gaze, her eyes wide with tension. He smirked. Shit.

"That's a relief." Graham reached out and tousled Henry's hair. "I much prefer cuddling your mum anyway."

Regina very nearly rolled her eyes, clinging to her disdain to beat back the panic.

"I'm going to get the stuff to change the dressings on you." Graham told Regina. "Don't overdo it."

He turned away from her and Regina stayed where she was, reclined against the doorframe. She resisted the strong urge to stick her tongue out at him, which was the fiercest invective she could summon right then.

She looked down only when she became aware of Henry hovering uncertainly at her side.

"Lean on me?"

Regina hesitated, not wanting to be dependent on anyone, let alone one of the people she was responsible for looking after. She realised, however, if she wanted to get all the way across the room to his bed then she was going to need help.

So she summoned a smile and draped her good arm over his shoulders and winced towards the bed. Henry walked with the care of someone responsible for a sculpture of spun sugar and he only seemed to relax once Regina was safely perched on the bed.

"Right, pyjamas and then teeth brushed." Regina tried to cover her discomfort –both physical and mental- with a brisk tone.

Henry hurried to do as he was bid, splashing enthusiastically in the bathroom and then hurrying back to bed. He hurled himself under the covers and bounced there a moment, smiling uncertainly at her.

Regina tilted her head.

"What's wrong?" She rested her hand on top of his knee under the quilt.

"It's just…you haven't done this in a long time. Tucked me in, I mean."

Regina opened her mouth to reply but he hurriedly spoke over her.

"It's my fault. I said I didn't want you to anymore and…that's not really true." Henry looked down at his fidgeting hands for a moment and Regina waited him out. "I just…I was so _mad_ at you and now I'm mad at myself and…I dunno."

"You were mad at me about the curse?"

"Yeah."

"You still believe there is a curse?"

Henry bit his lip and looked away from her. She gave his knee a brief squeeze.

"Talk to me." Maybe it was the pain medication or the bone deep fatigue –possibly even the near death experience- but Regina's demand was more of a request. How out of character, she mused.

"I still…think it needs broken." Henry looked up at her, braced for her reaction and seemed dumbfounded when she just watched him. "I just don't want you to get hurt. I need to find another way."

Regina's mouth twisted and she looked down at the bedspread, tracing the superhero pattern on it with her finger.

She thought about it. Really thought about it.

She hadn't felt mortal in such a long time. Before the curse, she had been chock full of magic. So terrifyingly steeped in it that nothing short of Rumple with a serious vendetta would have been able to pose her any lasting threat. She'd been paranoid, of course, wary of poison and whatnot, but that had been more to do with looking weak than it had any serious threat to her health.

Then, after the curse, nothing changed in Storybrooke. She hadn't aged, none of them had. Injuries were so minor –a wicked bad papercut was as life threatening as it got- that Regina couldn't remember the last time she had seen her own blood.

Of course, she had made that up last week by seeing nearly all of it at once.

Still, it was a short, sharp, shock to be suddenly confronted with the reality that she might well die…and that was what the end of the curse could mean for her. If not the magical backlash of it being broken then the angry mob created afterwards.

On top of that, would Henry even come with them all back to the Enchanted Forest? There was nothing to say that he would. Nothing at all. He had been born in this world, he belonged here.

No. He belonged with _her._

Regina sighed, then again, she should probably come around to the reality of the situation that the curse _was _breaking and that she was losing. She was losing and she couldn't think of a way out. She couldn't think of another back up plan, another evil scheme, another cunning get out clause, nothing. She had nothing to save herself.

Not anymore.

"Mom?"

"Do you still think I'm the Evil Queen?" Regina looked up at him suddenly and Henry sucked in a breath. Obviously that had been the one question he had hoped she wouldn't ask.

"I…no." Henry fidgeted for another moment. "Not anymore. I think you _were_, a long time ago, but not anymore. Now…you're my mom."

Regina managed something of a sad smile.

"Well, I suppose that's progress." She thought about how to pacify him for now. "Tell you what; you think about an alternative to breaking the curse and we'll talk more after you get your haircut tomorrow."

"Really?" Henry looked understandably sceptic.

"Really." Regina nodded. "I didn't want to send you away to speak to someone else about this, Henry, I just never thought that you would speak to me about it. If you're willing, so am I."

"So…it's real?" Henry watched her with wide eyes and Regina gathered herself. She really didn't have the strength for this.

"We'll talk tomorrow."

Henry opened his mouth to protest and then seemed to think better of it when he noticed how pale she was. He smiled instead.

"Okay." He scooted forward suddenly and pressed a kiss to her cheek. Then –incredibly gently- hugged her about the neck. "I love you, mom."

Regina's arm around his waist tightened at those words and she sucked in a surprised breath, her eyes suddenly burning.

"What's going on?"

Regina pulled sharply away from Henry and bit back the gasp of pain that it brought her.

"I was tucking Henry in." Her voice was dangerous but Graham didn't appear to care.

"I heard you gasp, I thought you were hurting." He didn't apologise either, prowling over to stand over her by the bed instead. He looked down at Henry. "Securely tucked in?"

"No danger of monsters getting me." Henry smiled. It had been a joke between them since the first night Graham had checked in on him before Henry had gone to bed at Emma and Mary Margaret's.

Graham took tucking in very seriously and had gone so far as to stuff the edges of the sheets under the mattress. Apparently this was to stop the monsters from under the bed reaching under the duvet and dragging Henry away by the ankle…and with that charming image the good Sheriff had turned off the light and left the boy alone in the dark. Loudly assuring himself that there was no such thing as monsters under the bed.

Graham apparently believed that abject terror was a healthy part of every childhood.

"Do I want to know?" Regina looked between them.

"No." Graham smirked at her and Regina was struck by the sudden urge to kick him in the shins. She muscled it down. Just. "You ready?"

Regina pressed her lips together realising she had no other excuses to cling to and nodded.

"Goodnight, mom." Henry wriggled down under his covers and smiled at her. Regina smiled as a matter of course. "Goodnight, Graham."

Her smile became a little brittle.

"You can walk?"

"Yes." Regina snapped at him.

He was silent a beat.

"Are you going to any time soon?"

"Shut up." Regina grumbled and gripped his arm, using him as a ladder to get to her feet. Graham stood patiently, his hand on her elbow helping her without either of them acknowledging it and Regina turned back to Henry, pressing a kiss to her fingers and then tapping her fingers against his nose.

He smiled at her and Regina –now really out of stalling tactics- let Graham lead her from the room.

The bone deep tension that she'd been stewing in all afternoon began to seethe and boil. She felt herself get more and more wound up in the five steps between Henry's bedroom and her own to the point where she thought one of her eyes was going to fall out.

Graham was either oblivious or purposefully ignoring it.

"Do you want to shower now or tomorrow?"

"Uh…" Regina was so tired that her brain took a long time to catch up with the simple question. "Tomorrow." All she wanted now was her bed.

"Alright." Graham propped her up against the end of the bed and his hands went to the buttons of her mystery dress. She stiffened and her chest began to painfully heave with every panicked breath. She tried to muscle it down, tried to get control of herself, but she shook all over and…

"Hey." Graham gripped her by the chin, lifting her face, and forced her to look him in the eye. "I will never force you."

"Hah!" The word left her almost as a sob of disbelief.

"I mean it. I've no desire to take that which is not given." Graham continued to unbutton her dress, watching as the parting material revealed smooth olive toned skin underneath.

She really was beautiful.

"Then why are you stripping me?"

"Because I need to dress your wound and I honestly don't think you can even lift your arms right now." Graham's voice was quiet, he was a little busy with being confronted with exactly how much damage he had wrought on her tiny frame.

The cast on her arm had been an uncomfortable reminder but to see the rest of it…

Her entire right shoulder was a rainbow mass of pain and bruising from where it had been dislocated. There was a lot of bruising over her heart as well, from where he had pushed half of his heart onto hers, not to mention the angry reds, purples, greens and yellows that spread over her sternum like a storm cloud.

His jaw clenched.

Regina worked her good arm free of the dress and he painstakingly helped her loose her injured arm, quietly amazed that she could even function in as much pain as she had to be in. The dress rumpled to her waist, catching on her curve of her hips.

Graham left it where it was and turned away for the medical supplies needed to change her dressing.

It wasn't until he turned back and looked at her that he truly realised how vulnerable she was.

Regina stood at the foot of her bed, her dress caught at her hips, held up by her slim bruised fingers poking out the end of her over bright cast. Her other hand was braced against the bedframe, white knuckled with the effort of keeping her upright. Her bruised lip caught between white teeth, her chest heaving with shivering breaths.

She was not embarrassed about her nudity. She had always known that she was beautiful. She had used it as her greatest weapon more than once. Not just on him, but on any other man who desired her…and there had been a great many of those. A hint of leg, a flash of cleavage, a toss of that long raven hair she'd had so many years ago…she'd been good at it. Invincible.

Now she was terrified.

Trying to hide it, of course. So damn proud, even now, but he could feel it radiating from her heart in waves. That connection between them not having dimmed in the slightest. He could _feel_ her heart racing. Her wide eyes watching him. Waiting for the blow to fall. She'd never had someone who had power over her that didn't use it to cause her as much pain as possible.

He would not be another.

She sucked in a harsh breath when he lowered himself to his knees in front of her. Her hand lifted, as if to ward him off, and she rocked back against the bedframe without its support. He ignored her, knowing she was about as strong as a kitten right then, and set to carefully peeling away the white pad over the wound in her chest. He was as gentle as he could be. He knew it would only stress her further waiting for the pain that wouldn't come but he found himself quite unable to hurt her.

He finally peeled away the bandage and found himself at eye level with her wound. It looked disproportionately small for something that had caused her so much pain. Just a little over three fingers wide, stitched neatly with black thread. It was perfectly verticle nestled in the apex of her ribs leading up into her sternum.

The angle had been wrong –he remembered- to slide the knife higher and between her ribs. He'd had to settle for jamming the blade in and twisting it up behind her sternum in order to reach her heart.

The bruising was so dark and angry that it appeared as if the wound still seeped blood.

He was drawn from his thoughts when her hand gently –so gently- came to a rest on top of his head. Her fingers tangled in his curling hair. He glanced up, seeing her head tilt back a little. She was still trying to control her breathing and failing miserably. He continued to ignore her and let her stew in the agony of whether or not he was about to gouge his fingers into her wound just because he could.

But he was not one of her past tormentors. He would wage a war on her that would be all the more devastating because it was so alien.

He vowed then never to hurt her again. _That _she would have no defence against.

He wouldn't hurt her, but there was a myriad of other tortures available to him. After all, he did know her inside and out.

She sucked in a breath when the cool of the alcohol was dabbed against the wound in order to beat back the chance of infection but it was a hurt that he had to deal to her, not one that he wished on her. Her fingers tightened in his hair, as they had done many times in the past for so different a reason.

He blew on the damp skin, causing goosebumps to flare over her flesh, and then applied a fresh pad. He taped it into place and settled his hands on her hips, waiting for her to release his hair so he could rise.

The silence stretched between them and he stayed where he was. His thumbs rubbed small circles on her bare skin. She still looked up at the ceiling.

"Why?" Her voice was low and it cracked halfway through that single agonised word.

"Why what?"

Her hand finally slid from his hair, brushing down over his cheek, the strong chords of his neck, to rest on his shoulder. He pushed to his feet, holding her steady when she tried to rock away from him and nearly fell because of it.

"Why aren't you hurting me?"

Graham huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh and his mouth twisted in an almost smile.

"Well, pet," he enjoyed the way she bristled at the name, "it's most likely because I'm not you."

He was disconcerted to feel the flinch of guilt tear through her. That torrent of feeling that savaged her. So many emotions and so powerful that it just felt like a storm. One triggering another and another until all she could do was brace herself against it and hope there would still be something of her left when it passed.

Graham's jaw clenched and he turned away, scooping up her pill bottle and rattling two out into his palm. He found a glass of water and held them out to her.

"Take your medicine."

Regina shook her head.

"Regina…"

"I don't want them." She was back to clinging the bedframe to stay upright.

"They'll help you sleep." He tried to bribe her.

"I don't like them. I'm not in control when I'm drugged."

"You're not in control at all." He pushed the pills closer to her. "I am. Take your damn medicine."

"I will _fight_ you."

"Good." He was hardly impressed. She was pale and trembling. "It'll let me know you're still you."

"Is this guilt?" Regina blinked rapidly against the dizziness that assailed her. "For…something?"

"For nearly killing you?" Graham took her hand in his and dropped the pills into her palm, daring her to toss them away. He shook his head. "Not guilt. Something you're more intimate with." His smiled was more a baring of teeth. "This is revenge, pet."

"Revenge?" Regina frowned at him and finally gave in, taking the pills and drinking down the water to wash the chalky taste from her mouth. "Nursing me back to health is your revenge? I don't think you've been paying attention."

"Killing you would be too messy. Not when I don't know if it would actually end the curse." Graham gripped her dress suddenly and shoved it over her hips, letting it crumple to the floor. He caught the glass from her hand before she could drop it and held her up with a hand at her waist. Her eyes were wide and frightened again. "No, pet, I'm going to do something worse."

"And…what is that?" She gulped hard, still desperately trying not to be afraid but he could feel it coiling around his and her heart both.

"Simple." He leaned in close, so close his nose brushed hers and her breath caught. With a practiced hand, he unclasped her bra and peeled it away from her chest.

"I-is it?" She clenched her jaw when she realised she had stammered. That his control already extended to her vocal chords.

"Oh yes, simplest thing in the world." Graham walked her backwards, rounding the bed. He tore back the covers and pushed her down, looming over her.

Her chest was heaving, her hands fisting in the sheets. Her jaw was clenched so tightly he feared for her teeth but he let her stew in it for just a few moments more.

"I already told you that I wouldn't force you." Graham ducked his head to her throat and her hand buried in his hair again. No doubt fearing he intended to tear out her jugular with his teeth. Admittedly not the first time he had done similar but it had never been directed at her.

He had much preferred the prospect of throttling her.

He let his teeth graze her, measuring the rabbit quick pace of her pulse thundering just under her skin.

"That's the only way you'll ever have me again." She shivered under him though he barely touched her. His hands resting in the cinch of her waist his teeth grazing her skin over and over and over.

He chuckled and it thrummed through her.

"Is it, pet? I think not." His teeth skimmed her again and she had no control over her spine arching towards him despite or perhaps because of how it stung. "I know you, creature of appetites, female of hunger, ravenous woman. You'll beg." He chuckled again and it managed to draw a whimper from her.

"Never." Her voice was a harsh and hitching whisper.

His hand suddenly ghosted down over her thigh and spanned it, lifting it, parting her legs. He used the grip to push her higher up the bed though he stayed where he was. His stubble rasping into her cleavage, his breath gusting hot over her nipple.

"You'll beg and gasp and mewl for me and I'll take you and –when I do- then I'll own you." He drew away suddenly, leaving her cold, her eyes flying open. He drew the sheets over her, a knowing smirk pulling his mouth. "Own you as completely as you own me."

"Never."

He just laughed at her again and leaned in close suddenly, biting a tender nip on her chin.

"I know better, pet, I remember _everything_ now."

Then he rose, crossing the room and dousing the light.

A fitting metaphor, she thought, for she had never been more in the dark.


End file.
